I finally confronted my father in 2005 and this was long overdue. I have written about this experience before but it has been a while and it was so profound that I feel it is worth visiting again.
I never had the courage to confront my father, even though the scene played out in my imagination for literally years before I made it a reality. I was finally able to do this after being inspired by the documentary film,' Searching for Angela Shelton', in which the filmmaker (Angela Shelton), set off on a cross-country journey to meet every person who shared her name: Angela Shelton.
What Angela found was an inner journey, where she came across far more than women who shared a name. As she made her way across the country, Angela met forty women, also named Angela Shelton. However, upon meeting them, she learned they shared more than a name: all shared shameful secrets from their past, just as Angela did. You see, Angela is a survivor of childhood molestation and incest, just as I am. Out of the forty women she met, twenty-eight of them had survived a sexual assault at one point of their lives. Some, like Angela and me, were molested at the hands of their fathers. Others were raped by friends, acquaintances, or strangers; all shared the same pain.
At the end of Angela’s journey, she made a final stop at her father’s home, where she confronted him about her childhood. As I watched, I knew I needed to take strength from Angela and confront my own father. It was a life changing experience.
Les and I made the trek to see my father at the assisted living center where he was residing with his second wife. Growing up, he had always seemed so huge to me but seeing him so old and withered, his face grim and inscrutable, he looked weak and helpless—so different from the tormenter of my past. It had been so long since I had seen him that he did not even recognize me but upon realizing who I was, he looked at me with real hostility and demanded, “What do you want?” (It was not until after I left that I realized he had not even pretended to seem happy to see me).
I looked him squarely in the eye and simply said, “I want to talk to you about my childhood,” and for that one minute, we shared the painful truth of my childhood when he responded, “That was really bad.” However, as quickly as that, the moment vanished forever, once again clouded by the comfort of the denial he had long held onto and once again and as usual, he tried turning the tables on me. “You were a bad child,” he screamed out! And that’s when Les really lost it. Les stormed over to the couch where my father sat and spat out his words, “She was a child! You molested her! How could you do such a thing to your child?”
Then he threw us out. We hadn’t been there longer than a few minutes but those few minutes were enough to help ease a lifetime of shame, self-recrimination, and doubt. We had locked eyes for that one moment. And what a moment that was.
I haven’t forgiven my father for what he did to me as a child. To be honest, I don’t know that I ever will. I know today that forgiveness is not about the person we are forgiving, it is about taking measures to make our own lives more peaceful and serene. I have found acceptance with what happened to me as a child but I haven’t found forgiveness per se. I am not saying that I will never get to that point—but I will say, at this point, acceptance and self-forgiveness are good enough.
It took me many years and much soul searching before I really forgave my mother—and she played a big role in my own self-forgiveness process. Seeing my mother come to terms and accept what happened under her watch, as a mother, was a big part of forgiving her for what happened to me. Forgiving my mother was so necessary—not just to our relationship but also to my sense of inner peace.
I am still wrestling with forgiveness of another person, which is the focus of this brutally honest post. My relationship with my sister has deteriorated in the past several years and I know the reason why. Even though my mother and I have thoroughly discussed what happened to me in my childhood and she has finally accepted the awful truth, my sister and I never have—and I am saddened to believe that it is very possible we never will.
I do see my sister as another victim of my father and I truly believe, based on both my own memory and some stories my mother recently told me, that she was also molested by our father. She has refused to talk about the past, has never visited my blog, and will never read my book—and this silence has stifled our relationship even further. Moreover, it has led to a great deal of resentment on my part.
My sister and I were never close growing up. In many ways, she was extremely cruel to me as a child. I can forgive her for that: after all, we were both products of a very dysfunctional environment. What I am having a harder time forgiving is her ongoing denial and her absolute refusal to have a real conversation with me, which I believe is imperative for us to have any kind of health relationship. Throughout my entire childhood, denial was the overriding theme and to have to deal with my sister's denial, today, is simply gut wrenching. Her denial and my subsequent resentment have built a huge and terrible wall between the two of us.
How do we break down this wall? How do I ignore the denial and once again allow a family member to live in the 'over the rainbow' fantasy existence of what we wished our childhoods had been? I know I need to forgive my sister and somehow ignore that wall of denial in order for us to have any kind of relationship at all. I am soul searching. Is a superficial relationship with my sister one that is worth the pain of having to deal with the ongoing denial? Or will it keep tearing me apart inside? I have often wished that we could choose our family members as we choose our friends. I know I need to find some resolution because I feel I am no more than a ghost in the relationship with my sister. We send cards; we perform the exterior niceties that are expected of each of us. . . . yes, we act out of duty because we don't have any control over who our family members are. Sometimes, I wish I were more perfect than what I am--but I am very flawed. Certainly, if I were so enlightened, I would be able to overlook this wall and accept that my sister cannot give any more. I hope I can become so enlightened because my resentment and her silence are ruining our relationship. I often try to look at how far I have come and not focus so much on far I still have left to go. However, in the case, I have to acknowledge that I still have quite a ways to go. But I will get there.
Peace,
Melinda
