Silence Grows

I have not spoken to my father since 2016, at least, not in the conversive sense. Words have passed between us in one sided conversations or quick reiterations that he will have nothing to do with me. Till 2018 I sent many emails and paintings to him, updates on my life, just as I had before I was banished. Of course, as my denial ended so did the emails.

This December will mark six years of that relationship of silence and anger. Six years of things he missed because I was kicked out of his hateful heart. I can safely say now, it was for the best far he knows no family love without his need for control and abuse. He manages to maintain proper relationships with his friends or in-laws, but the moment an ounce of shared blood is added to the mix, the social formalities that keep him civil are dropped in favor of his abundant temper and strict rules.

I have never had the capacity for his temper and have always counted myself lucky for it. My older sister and baby brother do or perhaps it's my mother's side's temper. Both bloodlines run hot and foul with nasty tantrums and loud bellows so it's really hard to say which it comes from. There's a running joke on my mother's side about the famous "Mitchon temper", but we will quickly tell you no one has a temper worse than a Parrish. Who is to really say where these tendencies come from and if they were inherited or learned? Like many family afflictions, they just are.

But, my temper is different. It's quiet and bitter with sharp words and stubborn control. It serves only to pull back the covers of the situation, unearth its true nature, voice what's unfair, and set my boundaries. I have no tolerance for poor treatment, not after nearly 20 years of it. There will be no yelling from me or pointless accusations. After years of my father insisting I have control of my emotions, it is only my temper I gained tight composure over. Perhaps this is because angry Allen was the only emotional version I knew of my father, and I did not want to be governed by an emotion as wild as his.

It is odd and almost fitting that after everything, the only emotion he has left me with towards him is anger. I have been through the stages of grief over the end of our relationship just as one mourns a dead loved one. When it ended I was only twenty-one, and before that I thought it was going so well. See, Allen cannot have healthy relationship with those he has a way to control. So, I had eliminated what I perceived to be the ways in which he could hold ownership over me. After I eliminated every item, I thought we would just have a healthy friendship. Sure, I would never trust him, but we could at last have the father daughter relationship I had always wanted.

I was naïve. Abusers will find something new to control or a reason to severe their relationship with you once that control is deemed impossible. And, true to form, he found a reason at Christmas to disown me forever. I had done the dastardly task of getting a piercing in my ear so was then and forever a bad person. Never mind that my mother had both ears pierced and he would buy her gold jewelry to adorn them. I had violated my own body in a way that broke his rules, and thus I was dead to him.

It is pleasant to know I can look back at these things now and laugh at how absurd of a human Allen is. He was always going to find something once I had severed all of the strings that attached puppet to master. It will never be about what I do to my body but about the fact that he cannot own me as one owns a dog. The hope I had built and clung to of us moving on with our lives and only carrying the good with us was a delusional grasp many abused children will find themselves making.

That is not to say that some relationships do not heal and form healthy conclusions. My mother and I did. It's examples of this that drove me onward. However, I had failed to realize both parties had to desire change and healthy love for that to ever happen. And, I was naïve enough to still believe at that time that my father loved me and wanted a healthy relationship with me.

Love does not and will never do what that man did to his family. If ever I was loved by him, it was so twisted and so warped that it was only a dark shadow of the word. I have no memories of him ever saying the words to any of his children, and I was the favorite.

Since I was the favorite, and the only kid with a relationship with him that resembled friendship, I had a hard time accepting his banishment. I stayed in a state of bargaining for six months or so before I shifted over to denial. For over two years, I sent him emails as if we had never stopped talking. Emails that he never answered. I forgave him in those emails over and over again. A couple of times, I even sent him landscape paintings I did on postcards. My mother informed me they were propped up on his desk by the computer he spent most of the day at.

Alas, as the silence grew in length, my denial ended and the emails stopped. For the next two years or so I battled with waves of depression coming and going as I sought healing. I got help, talked to a mentor, and dug in deep to overcome what had occurred. On occasion I did find acceptance within myself, but the depression would creep back in. I even thought I had reached peak acceptance when I walked myself down the aisle. The urge to email my father and inform him of all that he had missed was there, but then I realized I owed him nothing. Was this not acceptance?

He chose not to have any part of my life, and thus would not. Nearly a year later, I sent him a poem, outlining everything I felt. I know he opened and read that email and I hope it burns in his heart forever. Last year, I also went to his door one last time and knocked. I attempted to speak with him and was harshly turned away. He made it clear, he never wanted to speak with me again. And, I accepted that.

I find myself now in a sate of anger. Anger that is slowly healing as I unpack more and more how wrong everything he did was. Anger as I acknowledge what an awful human he is. Anger as I accept that every foolish ideal I clung to as an image of him was just a story I invented, never a possibility. Anger as I spend time with good people who are good parents and know he made all of those choices to inflict hurt on his own. In the midst of this anger, I realize I had not found acceptance yet because I had been still refusing to acknowledge who he was and what he did.

Eventually, like every stage, this anger will pass. Although, it has been the most healing stage thus far. Once I acknowledged that Allen is just a bad person and that he chose to do the things he did, I have been able to let go of so much of the pain I harbored in my heart. So much of the guilt.

Naturally, I am angry that he was so awful to his children and wife. It's the same anger I feel towards strangers that abuse. It's the anger society should feel towards an abuser. It's me finally acknowledging that my abuser had no reason to do the things he did, other than evil. And, when I accept these things, it's much easier for me to move on and not miss what he chose to never have.