A letter to my father

I met my counselor today. I talked and talked and talked. She hasn't had the chance to do much but listen. But she is going to be with me for awhile and needs to know the crazy things in my head that I don't know how to sort out.

My first year teaching my mentor told me teaching was like untangling a ball of string. At first it seems like a giant mess of things to do and learn. And then as you start separating out activities, organizing them, laying them out in your mind, it all starts to make sense and becomes clear.

I feel like the Johanna piece of thread, the abuse thread, the addiction thread, the desire for unavailable men thread, the care taking thread, the body image thread, are all going to make sense.

Like today, I realized how awful it was that my step mom, a school counselor, told me that what my dad did to me was not abuse and that I was an awful child for moving out and taking care of myself.

I also realized that when I was teaching and my students verbally and sexually harassed me I was told that this was my fault and that I shouldn't be mad at them. In fact, I should be worried about their future and help them learn math so they could graduate. These 16 and 17 year old boys who were as big as me were lying to me, drawing sexual pictures of me in their books, making fun of my ass in front of the class, making sexual videos about me. I was the only woman in the room with 35 crazy high school boys who could totally take over and win. And I was supposed to care about them? Are we serious?

No wonder I'm confused about when to get mad at people. No wonder I don't know when or how to stand up for myself. If I try I'm told that it is my fault and that I'm wrong for protesting my treatment.

Well, that is just one piece of thread being straightened out, revisited, and understood in a new way.

Of course, these revelations are not going to fix me. I'm understanding why I might have such a hard time knowing when to be angry and when to stand up for myself. However, this doesn't mean that I'm instantly good at being angry or standing up for myself. I think I was supposed to learn those things when I was little and develop over time.

My counselor wants me to write a letter to my dad. Eventually, I suppose I'll have to write him a letter forgiving him so that I don't stay in this high energy, draining state of agitation. I WANT MY LIFE BACK. I don't want to stew in this mess of abuse, addiction, anger. Yuck.

But today, my letter to my father is going to express how I'm feeling today. And I'm not feeling particularly magnanimous.

Dear Dad,

Do you have any idea where you actions so many years ago left me? Have you ever reflected upon the consequences of your behavior? Have you ever wondered why your beautiful, smart, funny, caring daughter desperately seeks the attention of men and falls for emotionally unavailable partners who can't give her what she deserves? Do you wonder why I worry about food so much and hate my body? You tell me to chill out and relax sometimes and that I don't need to be so perfect. Do you reflect upon why I'm like this?

I'm not going to accuse you of causing every trait and habit I'm trying to rid myself of. I can't really link my here and now to my past.
But, I promise you, that what you did to me and my mom, has been the source of hours and hours of wondering, crying, reflection, pain. And, honestly, when I look back and my journals and I see all the times where I wrote ridiculous pro-con lists trying to decide if I should stay with a man who wasn't treating me right, I think that much of that confusion was really confusion about you.

Do you know how guilty I felt about moving out of your house and tarnishing your reputation in town? You took away my money for college. Your new wife told me how awful my mom and I were. I had to file a restraining order against my father. I don't really understand the ways in which feeling guilty for taking care of myself when you were screaming and hitting me affected my life, but I'm sure it wasn't good. Do you know how many times I've written in my journal "I wonder if I should be mad at my boyfriend or maybe I'm just insecure, or clingy, or maybe it's all my fault. Or maybe they had a bad day, or it's because his dad died, or because he's depressed, or because, because because." I must have learned pretty well how to rationalize insane behavior to live with you.

Loving your father doesn't just go away when you realize that your father does horrible things. I know you love me, you packed my lunch. You let me bring friends on all of our fun trips. You told me you were proud of my school work. You helped me with my science projects. You financed adventures. So I had to learn to love someone who had a horrible, nasty, angry side.

Part of how I did that was believe you when you said that you only kicked my mom once. I believed you when you said her neck injury was from a car crash. That was a lie.  I've seen the MRI and talked to the doctor. You BROKE HER BACK and LIED ABOUT IT. Do you know how many hours I've wondered if that horrible chapter in my mom's book was true? I knew that in third grade I should be able to form memories and I couldn't remember stopping you from continuing to beat her. For the longest time this issue of the beating was a question of whether or not it happened. I didn't get angry about it because I didn't know if it was true. Now I know you lied and she told the truth and I see that you ruined my family. You were the reason my mom moved away. The nightmares you caused pushed my mom to drink and led to her final, nearly deadly, relationship with alcohol. Sure, it's not your fault she is predisposed to addiction, but until you beat her and ruined her she wasn't on the brink of death. What if you had killed my mom when you kicked her that day? The doctors say that a few millimeters more of damage in her neck could have killed her.  I would have no mom. Who would I talk to about what you did to me? What if she drank herself to death one day trying to avoid the flashbacks of your abuse? It could have happened that way.

Now I understand why my mom was afraid you might kill me in high school. You never  bruised me when you hit me. I'm tough. I could handle the pain you dished out. The yelling was much more what bothered me. But I see now, how it only took once to damage my mom's spine for life. I used to think that my mom was overreacting when she said she was worried you'd accidentally kill or paralyze me. I felt bad for believing her and moving out and ruining your year and making you cry. But I'm so glad that some part of me that I don't think I'm fully aware of took care of me and gave me a new loving home that year. I'm glad you had to sit and cry and reflect on how you lost your love and your daughter. You deserve to cry more than you did. Because I think that you have NO IDEA how much you've affected my life. I think you assume my mom was in treatment centers so many times because she couldn't handle drinking. I don't think you even know that much of that was for post traumatic stress disorder.

I don't think you have any idea that I still think that I can't have a happy marriage. I think that I'll avoid being with someone who flat out hits me, but that somehow they will abuse or hurt me in a way so subtle I won't notice. I don't think you know that I fight with my boyfriend and react to him as if he is going to hurt me. Maybe I won't have a happy marriage because I'm too damaged to even know what a happy relationship looks like.

I'm mad at you. You are an arrogant republican who thinks that people's misery is their own fault. You think that people who made bad decisions deserve to be punished for them. You can't see how growing up in a particular family makes it really hard to succeed in some areas of life. You never understood why it wasn't my underprivileged students' fault that they couldn't graduate from high school. Sure, I know that I'm getting at PhD in math education and have a brilliant resume. Obviously school was not an area that your abuse affected me negatively. However, I don't think it's all my fault that I have not managed to have a happy, healthy relationship with a man and myself. (And yes, I'm happy with my boyfriend, but I know I have issues there that he is being patient with. If I don't grow, I don't think he'll stay. And I still worry that he is too nice, that what I'm really looking for is someone with some mean edges because nice is boring.)

You are a jerk and think that you are so smart, so right, so hardworking and that everyone else is in a bad spot because of their own mistakes. You think that people deserve to be yelled at. My friends. Your brother. Your wife. The people who work for you. Waitresses. Hotel staff. I was not beaten because of my own mistakes. That was your fault. I had no control over that even though you told me you yelled at my because I made excuses. If I had only been perfect every single day of high school and kept my emotions perfectly in check and never spilled milk, or learned through experience and never gotten a B, then maybe you wouldn't have yelled at me. But I doubt it. The times you yelled were never predictable. They were about your mood, not what I did. And, I bet my mom might be right that you hate that I'm smarter than you. I KNOW that I'm smarter than you. I'm better at math by a long shot, better at writing by miles, nicer, more loved, and more attractive. And you used to be able to ski really well until you ruined your body with your own unwillingness to get the surgery you needed. I know it pissed you off that my mom was smarter than you. I know it pissed you off that I was so much like her.

I'm sick of being around you and hearing you talk like you understand the whole world. You don't even understand what you did to me and how angry I am that instead of doing my homework, having fun, exploring, learning writing, I am stuck writing you this awful letter. It's not fair that I have to do all this. But I'm going to so that I can have the life I deserve. And maybe I'll want to hang out with you again someday. I know you love me and I feel guilty not returning your phone calls, but what could I possibly say to you right now? I'm not ready to discuss all this and any other topic of conversation seems like a lie of omission. "How are you?" "Fine [except that I screamed at you for half an hour yesterday and don't even know who I am any more.] How about that for an acronym "Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional."

I love you, (because I feel biologically wired to do so and I also know you love me even if you have a horrible way of expressing it)

Your daughter