Part 26

I have written before about the fact that I still am remembering new things that I had blocked out, or forgotten, or whatever you want to call it.

When I initially began having the memories about the sexual abuse, I felt strongly that I wanted to confront my dad about it. I even tried contacting him, though I never heard anything back. I don’t even know if my attempt to contact him ever reached him, as it had been years since we had last spoken and neither of us had made any attempt to remain connected in any way.

As I traveled through this nightmare and remembered events of escalating horror, my dad became more of an abstract monster in my mind. The more I remembered, the more abstract he became, the bigger he became, the easier it was for him to hurt me, and the easier it was for him to fill up my every waking moment.

It became more and more difficult for me to remember things like what it felt like when he held my hand. And then I think about how he never did actually hold my hand, he just stuck out a finger from his fist for me to grab onto.

And then that is one more thing that separates the man I thought I knew from the man I was beginning to become aware of.

I had assumed certain things about my childhood. For example, I had assumed my dad wanted to keep me safe from harm, but when I try to remember specific events in which he acted directly to protect me, physically or otherwise, I have a really hard time coming up with anything at all.

I look at the scars on my hands and remember that one is from almost accidentally cutting my finger off with a hack saw when I was about 7. Why would my dad encourage me to do things like play with a hack saw when I was 7? The reason I did things like play with a hack saw was because I could tell it made him happy to see me as a kid who would like to play with a hack saw.

I wouldn’t even consider letting a kid, mine or anyone else’s, of any age, get anywhere near a hack saw, because they could, you know, accidentally cut their fingers off.

My dad played racquetball and one of the “together” things we would do is go to the health club and I would watch him play, or I would just run around or whatever. One time – I think I was about 12 – he asked me if I wanted to play against him.

Of course I wanted to play against him. I had an expectation of him teaching me how to play and showing me how he could hit the ball so hard you could hardly keep track of it with your eyes. He was a real badass at racquetball, or that is what I thought anyway.

So there we were – I was in the back left corner and he was serving. He hit the ball as hard as he could, and before I could even blink felt a deep pain in my chest. The serve had nailed me. I tried to blink back tears as I struggled to breathe through the pain.

I felt like an idiot, like a weak baby – like a girl.

The pain radiated across my chest and down my left arm and up into my neck. My dad thought it was funny, and asked me if I still wanted to be a professional baseball player. He told me that the hit I had received with the spongy, blue racquetball was nothing compared to what it felt like to be hit with a baseball

I told him, “no,” and then didn’t want to play with him anymore.

I was angry that he had said that about being a baseball player. The only reason I had ever even wanted to be a professional baseball player was because he thought it was awesome that I wanted to do that.

I do not recall having much of my own thoughts about what I would be when I grew up. I do remember reading a James Herriot book and thinking about being a veterinarian, but then someone told me I would have to stick my hands up cows’ asses, so that dream fizzled out pretty quickly.

Other than that, who I wanted to be when I grew up was my dad. He was invincible and amazing. He could do things no one else could do, although I cannot recall any of the amazing things he could do, just that he could do them. He was very mysterious about it all.

He was very mysterious about a lot of things. Even into my adulthood, I viewed that as a sign of his greatness. It was also one of the most maddening things about him. He would not say a word if he did not want to, and most of the times I wanted him to say something involved his acknowledgement of hurting me in some way, and he never, EVER, did that.

When I was about 22, I was at my parents’ house and I was about to open the door that led onto the back porch. My dad was on the other side and opened it at the same time, resulting in the door hitting me kind of hard.

It wasn’t a big deal, it didn’t even hurt. But this is what he said: “Oh, sorry.”

I was blown away, stunned. I told him that it was the only time I had ever heard him tell me (or anyone else) that he was sorry about anything.

And it was – still to this day I can think of no circumstances under which he has ever conceded any wrongdoing, intentional or not, in his lifetime of hurting others.

He didn’t say sorry about hitting me so hard with the racquetball, he didn’t say sorry when he burned my hand as a joke, he didn’t say sorry when he rolled up the car window onto my neck and almost crushed my esophagus, he didn’t say he was sorry about anything.

He found it ALL quite hilarious. My dad never laughed like he did when I got hurt. It delighted him to see my face contort into a startled look of pain, regardless of whether it was emotional or physical, and especially when he was the one to cause it.

He was always very indignant of it all, and I learned that if I was going to cry, I was going to get laughed at or dismissed or called irrational.

I started to become angry instead of hurt. He thought that it was really funny when I got angry with him, too, but only when I was little. As I got older, it began to really irritate him, which he expressed by literally turning his back to me and refusing to even acknowledge my presence.

Sometimes I would ask him for money to buy new shoes, or a bag, or whatever. Sometimes, he would say, “okay,” and pull out his wallet and give me a hundred dollar bill. Then I would feel like a princess.

Well, I guess I would want to feel like a princess, but really what I felt was that it was the least he could do to make up for being so horrible to me, and I spent his money happily.

All of these things I have been talking about in this post are things that I have never blocked out or forgotten. These were all things that comprised my conscious relationship with my dad, and always had.

I had always known he was a bastard. No one really did anything about it though, but as I got older, people would comment on his bazaar punishments and rules. I would then defend him, saying that he was just really strict, and even taking a bit of pride at being in a family that had such high standards for each other.

As my memories become more solid and concrete, and I have more and more outside affirmation of the factual nature of my memories, my dad becomes less and less abstract in my mind.

He is no longer this unknown monster capable of horrendous atrocities against me and against others. He no longer frightens me to the core as some sort of wraithlike demon that haunts and tortures my blood and my mind and my soul.

As my memory becomes more concrete, so does my sense of self. And so does my sense of, my knowledge of, and my familiarity with my dad.

I mean… he’s my dad.