About two weeks ago, I met with my father for the first time in three years. I’m not ready to tell the whole story here, but, boiled down to the essence, this is what happened: I confronted him about sexually abusing me. I expressed both my anger and my hope that we could have a healthy relationship, based on the truth, and that he could work towards healing, both within himself and within the family. He denied everything. He tried to manipulate me. And I saw in him, as if for the first time, the face of the man who molested me. Before this meeting, I had thought of my father as a werewolf — as a basically decent person who was overwhelmed by primal forces beyond his control, and transformed into a beast under certain conditions, all because he had been bitten by such a monster himself. I thought that his abusing me (which only occurred once) was an aberration, a terrible mistake made by a man who didn’t know how to deal with his emotions. But, coming face to face with him two weeks ago, I witnessed something else. I saw in him a malevolence, a desire to cause harm, a certain skill in using words as weapons, a powerful but hidden manipulation — the same emotional dynamics that I remember in his actions of sexual abuse. I saw in him an armor, a tumor of bone and steel that surrounds him and “keeps him safe” from painful realities but at the cost of his connection to the world, to the flowing river of change, to life and joy and grief and love and heartache and transformation, to the ever shifting stained glass panorama. He has chosen disconnection and denial so often, he has chosen domination and power-over so often, he has chosen to turn his anger and fear and sense of powerlessness into poison and hate and self-righteousness so often, that these patterns have become a part of him. He has made himself into something monstrous, of his own free will. He molested me because he choose to do so.
Dealing with the aftermath of encountering my father has been excruciatingly painful. I don’t know if I have the words to describe it. Really, I just don’t want to even attempt to do so in detail right now. There are so many strands to this knot: being triggered, and reliving the emotions I felt during the abuse; rage at my father for continuing to choose lies and domination; a vast grief opening up as I realize that there is no way I can have a healthy relationship with my father; experiencing trauma as a wound and feeling the bruises on my spiritual body, the skin torn up, my stomach gnawed away by poisonous teeth; rawness, the inability to feel any sexual pleasure that isn’t tangled up with pain and so many other yucky feelings. And yet, as much as I hate having to experience all of this, it is clear to me that I made the right choice in confronting my father. I know that all of this pain is part of a deep healing process. I know that, as much as it sucks, I have clarity about who my father is and the (virtually non-existent) chances for reconciliation. I know that I have chosen to walk with courage and honesty and love. While no one should ever have to experience what I’m experiencing, I also know that the fact that I’m feeling this soul-ripping pain means that I’m alive. Despite everything my father did to me, despite all the lies and abuse and messages that men shouldn’t feel, I am alive. I have retained and nurtured and regrown my connection with myself, the sacred passage to my tender heart which is a temple to the Divine Within Us All. I have chosen a path far different than my father’s path; I am not stagnating in armor that chokes the life out of me, but embracing the Web and the River and the Endless Cycle. I am growing and healing and changing and living and dying and being reborn.
