I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what I hope to achieve by talking about this again. I think I just hope it brings me some sort of peace of mind, or maybe, this time, I’ll have some sort of revelation and my grief will be fixed. Maybe all the pieces will finally slot together. I doubt it.
There’s no nice way to say this. You can try – passed away, left this life, whatever. No. None of it conveys what I want it to. My dad killed himself when I was sixteen. Died by suicide, whatever, that works, too. It was February 20th 2020, which was a Thursday during the half-term holidays. I’ve talked about the day it happened before. What’s the point in doing it again? All it does for me is remind me how it felt to feel my life shatter when the police came knocking. It’s strange, because it wasn’t like I wanted my dad in my life. I just didn’t expect this to be the way he left it.
That’s a lie. It was expected. My dad was ill for a good part of my life. I don’t like the psychiatrisation (is that a word?) of addiction, but I don’t like the criminalisation of it even more, so psychiatry can win this time, I guess. My dad was, then, sick, let’s say. He drank more than I could explain to you. I would come home from school at 2:30pm to him passed out from drinking. If he wasn’t passed out, he was lounging around, doing said drinking. If not that, he was shouting at someone. If not that, something else I won’t get into. No point. If not any of that, I’d come home to a suicide attempt. It wasn’t unexpected.
I think I understand why now. I think it was our fault, a bit. Why the alcohol, I mean. I remember my mum telling me not so long ago that he had confided in her about childhood abuse, but that no one else backed him up – said he was the best treated out of his siblings. Note to self: don’t open up about abuse no one else witnessed. I would drink, too.
Maybe it’s wrong of me to see myself in my dad, to see my dad in myself. I’ve never been, and never will be, an abuser, a rapist, anything. I swore that to myself long ago, that I’d never take my issues out on other people, no matter how bad it got. Sometimes it makes me sick that I empathise with the man who didn’t seem to understand that I empathised with him, or had feelings at all. I suppose I have to be the bigger person. Is it wrong of me?
I don’t think I have a choice. How can I not empathise, as a psychiatrised person, with someone who was angry about psychiatric abuse? About having this (and other) abuse denied, even though it was forced upon him? I believe my dad. It’s more than anyone else in my family can say. I want to be able to tell him that I believe him. That’s the main reason I want him back. I’d take beration, neglect, being stolen from in more ways than one, to just tell him that I believe him. It happened. I know it did. I don’t know how I know. Why should I trust a liar?
They’re all fucking liars, though. It’s a lie that there was “nothing wrong with him.” It’s a lie that they tried to help. It’s a lie that addiction turns you bad. It’s a lie that he was a good man. Is it a lie that he was a good man?
I’ll never know, and that’s what hurts the most, I think. I don’t know my dad as a good man. I know him as someone who took his issues out on others, myself included. I know him as someone my skin crawled around. Grotesque. I want to be able to see him as the good man he supposedly was deep down, but I can’t. I had that chance stolen from me. Is it selfish to phrase it like that? He had the chance stolen from him to be a good man. Did he deserve the chance at all? How can you redeem those things that he did?
To whoever’s reading this: I’m angry. Can you tell? But I’m not even angry at my dad anymore. I know that I could scream and shout forever about how infuriating it is to be left, on purpose, with no answers, no closure, no goodbye, no apology. But I understand. I gave him the cold shoulder – we all did. I have to carry that with me forever. I was a child. Is it really my fault I did that? I don’t know; it might be. Anyway. I’m not angry with him. I’m angry that it got to this point, that no one would just tell him they believed him. When an abuser says they’ve been abused, surely they know what abuse is. Or maybe that’s naive of me. I’m angry that I have to be the sick one, that I have to navigate being the sick one without a sick person. I’m angry that I’m, to my family, a reflection of my dad. I’m more than my sickness. But, what can I expect? He was never more than his sickness once he got sick. No one fucking listened.
To my dad: Fuck you, I believe you, and I’m sorry. Are you?
If I'm the only one of us who's sorry, then fuck.
Comments
Post a Comment