day 4 : something you have to forgive someone else for.
i have to forgive my dad. as a parent and as a person i have to accept that he did the best he could with what he had. he did the best as he could, being the person that he is.
growing up until about age 10, when my parents got divorced, my dad was my hero. he was my best friend.he was my every day. i spent more time with him than i did with my mom. he was the best pal a little girl could ask for. at least until life got hard. and changed.
my dad had a very poor childhood, in more ways than one, that left him unable to handle certain things about life. he was neglected and tormented, abused and ridiculed daily growing up. he was forced to be taken out of school in the 7th or 8th grade and to live alone on a farm to care for himself. he felt abandoned. he was passed around to family members but always under the thumb of his dictator father.
my dad was, and still is, very sensitive. he is very beat down. he doesn't read or write well and that makes him feel like less of a person. less of a someone that others would want in their lives. he has no self confidence or self worth. my mother is a true mother. some people are just born to mother and care for all who are in their lives nonstop...and that is who she is. she cared for my dad starting from a young age, of 15, when they met and she became pregnant with me. he is ten years older than she.
when their marriage ended my dad did a lot of unfair and hurtful things to my mom and to me. he pulled away and didn't know how to accept that his life that he knew, his family was over and changed. he now had to care for himself and make his own way. he tried, but left me behind. there wasn't room or the ability to hold our love and relationship together. he would make promises of spending time with me and never call or show up for our weekends, for our father daughter moments. he wouldn't show up for 6 months to a year at times. some months would be good and i would see him every other weekend. and then again, nothing for a year.
i didn't comprehend how he could be this way to me. how could he not love me anymore when we were so close before. how could he not want to see me grow up, to hear my laugh, to drink hot jello together while watching wrestling. how could he leave me waiting by the front door - listening for his truck to come over the hill to pick me up...for our time, for our weekend.
during all of this mess that lasted for years. and years - my mom would always say to me that he loved me just the same as before, but that he didn't have the emotional capacity, because of his troubled life and family growing up, to express his love. to handle how to be a father when i needed it the most. it was unfamiliar to him to have to be the adult and not just the best friend. she made sure, through every harsh word and action, that i never thought of him as 'stupid' or 'unworthy' but that i also had the choice to rise above the situation and accept him for who he was and what, at any time in any amount, he could offer me as a father. she said i outgrew him and he had no way to deal with that so he avoided it. avoided me because he felt defeated and knew he had hurt me and could never live up to what a father should be. i just wanted a father that was there when he said he would be. just him being there and wanting to be there was enough. even as the child, i had to reach out and form together the brokenness.
there are many many things that were said and done on his part that i have to move on from. i must let go and deal with how life works out. i need to know that any amount of time with him, no matter how little and sporadic it may be, will only enrich my life now. how fleeting it is - i have to move forward and away from the hurt to forgive him and accept him how he is. how he will always be...each little bit now counts as progress and i know he loves me in the best way that he can. the best way he knows how to love. his way.
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