Breaking Down the Wall Between My Father and Myself - Day 4

Today I had the opportunity to talk to my brother about our family. Typically my brothers and I do not share our experiences within our family. It was eye-opening to talk to him, and very timely considering what I've been writing about. I'm going to just jump into SF to see what I can dig up, because I'm not sure how accurately I can relay snippets of the conversation itself. This has been a 7+ year process, something I've known for over 7 years I need to address at some point. I have tried half-assed at times, but never with much success or progress. In 2 days of self-forgiveness and a very supportive conversation with my brother, I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere. There's a lot to follow, but I'm trying to dig as much as I can, and I'll pick up the digging again soon I'm sure.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to refrain from meaningful conversations about our experiences within our family with my brothers. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing this as the status quo, the way it is, even though I am dissatisfied with this as a status quo.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear conversational intimacy with my brothers due to feelings of embarrassment or being wrong in my perspective.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not validate my own experiences to the extent that I do not share them because I feel so in-valid within them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize and acknowledge the immense value in understanding the perspective and experiences of my brothers, both of whom grew up under much the same conditions I did, and neither of whom chose the coping methods I did.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to dismiss the value of my brothers to me as a way of justifying my resistance to engaging in meaningful conversations with them. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that they are the ones who do not wish to engage in meaningful conversations. This is not true.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel as awkward as my brothers sometimes seem within these conversations, and for accepting and allowing that as a reason to not pursue them.

But this isn't why I'm writing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to build a wall and shut my dad out of my life for the past 7 years.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to side with my mom in their divorce, painting my dad as all bad and my mom as all good. They are both just people who are doing what they accept and allow as their best to be good parents.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear and feel anxious about the idea of seeing my dad after 7 years of not seeing or speaking to him.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to further resist interaction with my dad or forgiveness because of some of the pressure I have received from other family members. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to this pressure in a way that exacerbates the problem as a point of rebellion or resentment or feeling outrageously misunderstood.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not acknowledge the ways that my dad showed me he loved me as best he could within his mental illness. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see how even though he almost always missed the mark, my dad was 100% dedicated to his family and his children.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to exist within my reaction and my self-victimization rather than trying to understand where my dad is coming from, as if he does not deserve that understanding. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blame my dad completely for his conflict with my brother even after learning about ways that my brother instigated conflict.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to adopt an identity and personality over the past 7 years as a girl who does not talk to her father: a victim. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself as a victim within my family even before then.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue operating within the very dynamics that I have long identified as being so detrimental: triangling through my mother, lack of intimacy with my brothers, shutting out my father, taking on the role of a victim, as if no longer all living in the same house or becoming and adult somehow magically changed this dynamic. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not investigate my role within this dynamic simply because I identified myself as a helpless observer. Feeling helpless does not mean I am helpless.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to build that fucking wall. That wall is what is making this so difficult. A relationship with my dad is already difficult, and my brothers can attest to this, as they have both maintained a relationship with him on varying levels. But it's not even the relationship that concerns me at this point. It is that moment when I see him for the first time in 7 years. When he sees me for the first time in 7 years. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to build that moment up in fear and anxiety. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think about the emotions that might arise within that moment as emotions that I cannot handle rather than emotions that need to be released. Within this I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually suppress emotions as too much to handle.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see my mom as all good for so many years. Within this, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, upon learning and seeing how my mom is only human, not give my dad the same realization: that he is only human, and he is not all bad.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be stopped by my fear.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be stopped by the unknown.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I do not have directive agency over my internal experiences within my external experiences. I can handle anything.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to contribute to a dynamic in which my dad has been shut out of the life of his family, his career, his life, because he was painted as all bad within the divorce.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be the daughter that my dad does not have contact with.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing my dad to be lonely and full of shame and to not know how to solve that, but to desperately want to solve that. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not really see how desperately my dad has only ever wanted us to be happy and taken care of, no matter how ineffective he was at achieving this.

I don't know how self-honest my dad can be. I don't have that answer. But I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect him to be anyone other than who he is in any given moment. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wonder what it would be like to have a dad, as if I don't have one. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to victimize myself in the face of another person, my dad, not doing the things I think he should.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel upset that he hasn't reached out to me in 7 years, when in reality he has been respecting my desire for space. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to both sides of this polarity.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and allow the suggestion that sometimes it is okay to build walls. I took that and ran with it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget or discount the actions of love that my dad showed all of us simply because they are not socially accepted actions of love.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that the interpersonal, social problems that my dad displayed say anything definitive about me and who I am and what I am worth.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize the true value of sharing these experiences and perspectives with my brothers. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have never told my brother of pivotal events that took place 7 years ago as to why I shut my dad out, assuming he would just somehow know, or that my mom would have told him at some point. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to never share that with him, and to never ask about what he experienced when I wasn't there.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to desire intimacy with my family members but to do nothing to achieve it out of fear or doubt that it is possible.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to retell these stories to myself and to therapists and to friends until they were solidified in me as truth. They are stories. I believe that the only way to move forward with my dad is to let them all go. There is no use in rehashing. I shall say, "hello, how are you today?"

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see all that is within me that is also within my dad. Things that I got from him or learned from him. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see the things within my dad which are valuable, strong traits.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to spin all things related to my dad in a negative light. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create a polarity between my dad and my mom.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget many interactions with my dad so that I feel like I don't have many memories of him other than the bad stories I retell.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue on in my helpless child personality/character even into adulthood and attempts to grow beyond my coping skills for what happened in my childhood. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to let this helpless child personality/character prevent me from standing up in self-responsibility and self-honesty to see family dynamics for what they really are, and my participation within them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that there is anything about a meeting with my dad that I couldn't handle, especially in any way that is actually detrimental. If I have to leave early, I have to leave early, and that is really the worst case scenario. Anything else would be excessive emotional energy that I would have to accept and allow.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to realize that by understanding my dad, I can better understand myself, and yet not do anything to move forward with this process. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize just how valuable it is to understand myself within my dad.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hear about how my dad is not doing well, knowing that he is filled with guilt and shame, and yet to not do anything about that because I feel like he is the adult and he owes something to me. Now I am an adult. I owe it to both of us to break this wall down. Whatever stands on the other side is what stands on the other side, but right now I cannot even see it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to tell myself and others that I want to reconnect with my dad "someday," but to file that away as some distant or not-so-distant event in the future for which I have to do nothing to prepare because someday I will just somehow automatically be "ready." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to delay on preparing for this as if the only value of this preparation is specifically to be able to see him in a productive way, when in reality this preparation is for me and is already assisting me in understanding myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see this specific process as too big to walk through, or too big to walk through alone. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to put my trust and money into numerous therapists in hopes that they might be able to uncover an answer that is inside me and that only I can uncover.