Author: jacqelinewilson

Taking My Rapist’s Side

Blog Post 8

Taking My Rapist’s Side

The things that my father has done are so outrageous, so far from normal, that they have a surreal feeling to them.  These are the sorts of behaviors that if you put them in a work of fiction they would be dismissed as unbelievable.  But the things that he’s done are unfortunately real.  When I’ve been caught up in one of his aberrant behaviors, I start out stunned and unable to react but end up enraged later.  I’ll ask the question, “How could anybody even do that?”  Maybe it’s because there is Evil in the world.   Maybe it’s because my father is so twisted in his thinking that he only knows how to behave in a disturbed manner.  Most likely, I’ll never really know.

One year when I was in college in my early 20’s, I had a third shift job monitoring the residents in a home.  Since they slept at night, I was able to do my homework there.  I’d leave work and go to school from about 8am until noon.  At that time, I’d go home and sleep all afternoon until it was time to get up and go to work again.  At this time, “home” was a small off campus apartment that I shared with roommates.

One day while I was sleeping in the afternoon, my boyfriend showed up at the apartment.  My roommate let him in the door, and then into my bedroom.  He woke me up, interested in having sex.  I was sound asleep and not interested.  He felt entitled to my body and raped me.  I fought him and was bruised on the inside of my legs where he had pried them apart.  Once he had gotten what he wanted, he left.

I had to get to work that night and I had school in the morning, so instead of reporting him I took a shower, put my clothes on, and went to work like nothing had happened.  Who would believe me that I’d been raped by my boyfriend, anyway?  And I had shit to do.

But you can only stuff those feelings for so long before they come out whether you want them to or not.  Mine wouldn’t be denied and after a few weeks I completely fell apart and couldn’t even function as a human being.  I couldn’t stay in that apartment any longer or sleep in that bed where I had been raped.  I ended up moving back into my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house, dropping out of school, and eventually quitting my job.

I was in my bed at my parents’ house one afternoon, sleeping, as I still had my third shift job, when my former boyfriend and rapist walked into my room.  I was horrified.  What the Hell was he doing here?  As he approached across my room, I reached for the phone on my bedside stand to dial 911.

The ex saw what I was doing, as in I was calling the police on him, and immediately reached for my hand and for the phone and we got into a physical fight over it.  I never managed to say anything into the phone, but the police knew which house it came from anyway.  The ex left when he realized that the police would be on the way.

I threw on a robe and went downstairs and asked my father how this person had gotten into the house and into what should have been the sanctuary of my bedroom.

My father said, “I let him in.”

Me, horrified and confused, “What?”

My father, “He said he was sorry.”

Let me be clear, my father knew that this man had raped me.  I’d told him.  I’d told him that was why I was moving home.  He knew.  Let that sink in.  He knew and he let him into my bedroom.  Because he said he was sorry.

This is so far out of the realm of normal human behavior that I don’t even know what to say about it.

Obviously, I was upset.  To make matters worse, when I told him that I had called 911 and the police were on the way, he INSISTED that I call them back and tell them not to come.  There was no way he would have the police in front of his house.

I was now more upset, hurt and betrayed.  Humiliated, I called the police back and told them not to come.  Much to my relief, they said, that’s nice, we’re coming anyway.

They came into our house and sat down with us.  I told them what happened and they couldn’t actually do anything as no crime had been committed there, but they took the ex’s name and made a report and I let them know that I didn’t want him coming around to where I lived.  At the very least, they were supportive and kind.  The police were supportive and kind, but not my father.

When I think of this, I wonder how could a father treat his daughter like this?  If my child’s rapist showed up at my house, they’d be greeted, let’s say, differently.  It can only be deep seated misogyny.  To him, I am not a person.  Nothing I say, or do, or feel, matters.  My experiences don’t matter.  But to him, the experiences and words and feelings of other men matter, even in relation to his own daughter.  I was his plaything and it’s just fine for other men to use me as their plaything, too.  Even if one rapes me.  He’d always treated me as if I had no right to say “no.”  He clearly didn’t think that I had the right to say “no” to anyone.

 

 

 

The Dream

Blog post 7

The Dream

Last night I dreamt that I saw my parents and a long dead uncle and aunt.  We must have been at a family reunion or something.  We were at some sort of resort.  I saw my, long dead, aunt and uncle and was so happy to see them.  I hugged them both, with joy.  I was both happy and surprised to see them.  I don’t know if this matters, but this uncle in my dream is my father’s brother.

My father, mother and I were sitting in a room.  It kind of looked like a big living room.  I think at times it resembled the living room at a house that we had lived in years ago.  Other times it was more rustic, and resembled a place that we had had a family reunion at once.  We were each sitting in straight chairs a several feet apart from each other.

Anyway, my father was asking me why I had cut him out of my life, and he wouldn’t let up.  My mother was parroting him, telling me to tell him.

My mother has been dead for over two years.  This dream was full of ghosts.

I said to my mother, “But I told you already.  You know!”

I was desperate and very upset.  I just wanted this interrogation to stop.

My mother was, in life, not in a position of power to deal with my father.  She was dominated by him, also, as she was dependent upon him.  She was a homemaker, but more than that, she didn’t know how to manage money or pay a bill.  I’m sure my father had her right where he wanted her in many ways.

In the dream, she backed up my father, demanding that I “tell him.”  She said that I owed him an explanation for my behavior.

My father continued to badger me for an explanation and I finally had had enough.  I blurted out, “You molested me.”

He laughed.

I went on to describe what he had done to me, to him.  I said it with conviction.

He countered with, “We were just playing.  You are making a big deal out of nothing.”

He said some more things along those lines, but the dream is fading.  But basically, he denied and blamed me for “misinterpreting.”

When the laughing and denial didn’t work, he cried.  I didn’t love him.  I was ungrateful.  He hoped I’d get some help with my problem.  (Meaning that I was imagining things.)

I told him that his was exactly why I hadn’t talked to him about it.

And this is why I haven’t talked to him about it.  I really think that he believes he’s done nothing wrong, that he’s the victim.  I think he’s actually that deluded.  He thinks he’s entitled to do whatever he wants to women and girls, that they are just there to serve him, and other men.  I think he truly believes that women don’t matter, that we’re not fully human. It’s probably how he lives with himself.

 

 

 

 

 

Pushback

Blog post 6

Pushback

In quick succession after not seeing my father for Christmas, I ignored his invitation to attend church with him, where the church would be honoring him for his ninetieth birthday, and then I didn’t go to his birthday party at his house that he threw for himself, and I threw away the card that he sent me to celebrate the day that I was adopted as an infant without even opening it.  I’ve never wanted to celebrate that day.

The problem was, he kept calling me, even though his numbers were blocked on my phone.  Unfortunately, even though he was blocked, his messages would show up in my messages anyway.  The phone just didn’t ring.  And since I wasn’t responding to his phone calls and I had him blocked on all social media, he resorted to a method that couldn’t be ignored: The United States Postal Service.

I’m sure by this time he knew I was shunning him.  By avoiding all of these occasions that were important to him, I’d made it obvious.  So he ramped it up with a weekly phone call that I would see transcribed in my messages and cards and letters.  He sent a card for Christmas a bit after Christmas.  Then he sent a birthday card.  The only reason that I opened them was because if they contained any money, I planned to donate it to the Rape Crisis Center.  The Christmas card was just a card, but the birthday card contained a letter.  I read it once and threw it away.  He whined about me shunning him, portrayed himself as loving, and basically accused me of being hateful.  I went into a bit of an emotional tailspin, not from the things he said, but him contacting me when I didn’t want him to, brought up the old feelings of him touching me when I didn’t want him to.  It’s like he was forcing his unwanted presence upon me.

I threw the “Happy Adoption” card away unopened and was proud of myself for doing that.

Then a week or so later, I got a thick #10 envelope in the mail from him and my curiosity got the best of me.

Keep in mind, that this was, ironically, far more contact than I would have had with my father when I was “in contact” with him.  I would only see him a few times a year and now he’s pestering me weekly or so.  So much for “no contact.”  But up to this point, I’d really just frozen him out.

The thick envelope contained a letter explaining that he was going to see a psychologist and he wanted me to come.  He wanted to work out “our problem.”  And he sent several pages of computer print outs about the psychologist.  I was like, what the Hell?

But I also wasn’t going to bite on his bullshit.

I’d been to counseling with him and it was him lecturing me and focusing on how disappointing I was and ungrateful and rotten.  I was not the kid he ordered from the adoption agency.  I’d seen this movie before and I know how it plays out.

It’s not my job to persuade my father that he abused me.  I’ve told him before and he had the chance to take responsibility and he blamed me.  I’m done with that.

It’s not my job to help my father heal.  He can do that without me.  Or not.  It’s up to him.

In the letter, he also talked about how upset he was at me shunning him at his birthday.  He has no idea that the gift I gave him for his birthday was not calling the church and letting them know the sort of man they were honoring.  Such irony.  I had gone so far as to look up the church’s phone number, but didn’t call.  It just felt too vindictive.

So it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop contacting me and I was going to have to tell him to stop contacting me.  I had been chewing on this for a while and finally realized that it had to be done.  That I had to do it.

The last line of the birthday card he sent me said, “Practice love, not hate.”  Inspired by that, I sent this note:

The most loving thing you can do for me is leave me alone.  Please stop contacting me.

I don’t need to give him any other explanation.  I’m done telling him how I feel.  I don’t want to open myself to being vulnerable to him.  There is a wall between us and I put it there and I want it there.

I hated my childhood and that feeling of powerlessness.  I remember that I couldn’t wait to become an adult so that I could get out of my house and have some control over myself and what happened to me.  This is me taking control of myself and taking my power back.

It’s not easy.

I knew how long it would take for a mailed letter to get to my dad’s house and I started checking my phone for messages, although none have come yet.  Nor any mail.  But I’m not convinced that none will.

There is another outcome that I fear.  I’m afraid that he’ll kill himself.  A close family member of his killed themselves out of anger and mental illness, and I wouldn’t put it past him.  I fear the phone ringing and a message from my brother saying that dad’s dead.  It just wouldn’t surprise me.  I don’t want that to happen but it’s not my responsibility to prevent it, either.

I just want him to leave me alone, undisturbed, to live my life in peace.

 

It’s Easier to Just Keep the Secret

Blog post 5

It’s easier to just keep the secret

So I watched Leaving Neverland over the past two days, and I’d have to say that it was unexpectedly reassuring.  First, let me say, that I’m so sorry that those men went through what they went through when they were boys.  But I am grateful that they told their stories, because I could identify with how they felt and how hard it was to finally tell someone that they had been abused.  It’s easier to just keep the secret; it’s less frightening and it’s less disruptive.  I totally understood why it took them so long to tell.  It’s taken me decades.  And it’s not that I have new memories, it’s just that it’s taken me this long to really realize that I was abused, because my father acted like it was NORMAL behavior.  It made me feel like I was the one that was wrong.

My father was powerful to me, just as Michael Jackson was powerful to those boys.  My very life depended on my father.  He owned the house, brought home the money.  The families of the boys in Leaving Neverland had been sucked in to the Michael Jackson machine to the point that their families depended on him.

Even after I could no longer deny to myself that I had been abused, I was terrified to tell.  It was easier and less risky to just maintain the status quo.  If I told, there would be disruption, and perhaps judgement.  But at what cost?  The secret was eating away at my soul.

So I continued, for years, to pretend that everything was fine.  I had my father over for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I’d call him on his birthday.  But my skin crawled at his touch.  A hug left me nauseated.  I’d have a migraine for days afterwards.  The people around me wondered why I acted so stressed.  The fact that he was obviously irritating to be around didn’t account for the level of stress I exhibited.

But telling.  The truth.  It seems so obvious.  But it would be disruptive.  He wouldn’t be coming over for Christmas or Thanksgiving, and he’d likely complain to other relatives about that.  Same old story that he’d used against me when I was being abused as a child, “You don’t love me.  My ungrateful daughter doesn’t love me.”  He’d brainwashed me well.  I didn’t want to suffer the repercussions of him whining to others about how awful I was.

For years I’d politely answered the question from relatives that I would see about my dad.  “How is your dad doing?”  Me, “Oh, I just saw him at Thanksgiving and he seemed well.”  So, if I’m not in touch with him, if I’ve cut him out of my life, if I’ve decided to live in the new reality in which I admit to myself, and some others, that he’d abused me, how do I answer that question?  I don’t want to tell everyone that I’ve been abused.  It’s not their business.  So, my answer has evolved to, “I’m sure he’d love to hear from you and then you can ask him yourself.”  It’s bland, and vague, and nobody follows up on it anyway.  With someone else, I gave a little bit of an explanation, “Your relationship with my father was not the same as mine.  Mine wasn’t good and it’s become distant.  The best way for you to connect with my father is directly rather than through me.”  They also don’t follow through, but it’s an answer I can live with.

And there you have it.  I was worried about hurting other people.  Some of the male members of my family, they really looked up to my dad.  Because my dad treated men and boys with respect, unlike his treatment of me, and my mother, and girls.  The girls were objects while the men and boys were fully fledged human beings.  I really didn’t want to shatter that image of him because it would hurt others that had fond memories of him.

Even if those memories were based on a lie.

And what if nobody believed me?

My own father didn’t believe me.

He told me it didn’t hurt when I told him it hurt.  He didn’t stop when I asked, no, demanded him to.  He’d tell me, “everybody likes this,” which made me feel like there was something wrong with me.

But I finally reached the point where I cared enough about myself that I told.  I didn’t care if everyone in the family was mad at me or never spoke to me again.  I didn’t care if I was cast out of the family.

I told.  And much to my surprise, I was supported.  The support I received was overwhelming in that it was so unexpected.  I was believed.

During the end credits of Leaving Neverland, they show video of one of the survivors burning his Michael Jackson memorabilia, gifts from the singer himself.  I got it, because I had gotten to a place where I had to get rid of any gift that my father had given me.  Each gift only reminded me of him, and those reminders were painful.  I’d been hanging on to these things out of moral obligation, but just having them was painful.  It was like my father was intruding in my home with the presence of these gifts.  I didn’t burn mine.  A few I tossed in the trash can unceremoniously and the rest I donated to Goodwill.  Let them do some good for someone else.

It feels freeing to purge these things from my home.  Telling the truth is bringing me inner peace, and getting rid of the gifts is making my home a more serene haven.

The Difficult Patient

Blog Post 4

The Difficult Patient

I work in healthcare, and from time to time we get some difficult patients.  I’m talking about the truly offensive ones that make inappropriate sexual comments to the female staff and even try to touch their breasts, or butts, or crotches. 

We had one recently who was like this.  We traded out most of our staff that was caring for him so that most everyone was male.  It’s an easy, non-confrontational way to get them to stop.  There was still one female nurse that still had to take care of this patient.  The patient kept trying to grab at her crotch, and the nurse was very upset over being violated like that. 

Another coworker once remarked about a patient who had come in for a procedure and had nobody with him, and nobody to take him home afterwards.  He said, “Sometimes I wonder what these people have done that they have nobody left in their lives that cares about them.”  I think I know.

My father was in the hospital for about a week a couple years ago, being treated for a blood clot.  I was visiting him (another one of those things I did out of moral obligation) when he began to abuse a nurse in a similar manner. 

My brother and I were just sitting there in my father’s hospital room, making small talk, like you try to do when you are visiting someone in the hospital.  A nurse came in to do a check on him.  She tried to take his blood pressure and ask him a few questions about how he was doing, but my father had other things on his mind. 

He asked her to give him a bath. 

She politely told him no and tried to go on with her duties.

But my father insisted.  He needed a bath and he needed her to do it.  He really needed one.  Told her to go get a washcloth and give him a good rubdown.  He tried to grope her.

I was horrified, and he didn’t stop.  My brother told him to “Stop it.  You can’t talk to her like that.” 

But he continued. 

I got up and walked out of the room.  And left.  I was embarrassed that he was my father.  I was embarrassed that I even knew or associated with him.  I felt terrible for that nurse.

I had to go to the park and take a vigorous hike just to calm down. 

When I saw the fallout at work in how upset my coworker was at having to deal with a man very much like my father, it just reinforced my decision to not have any contact with him. She only had to deal with him for a few minutes at work.  I grew up with it. 

Telling Others

Blog post 3

Once I realized what my father had done to me, and that I couldn’t be around him anymore, I was going to have to tell some people, and I dreaded that.  I was so used to not being believed, to not being taken seriously, and to being blamed, that I thought nobody would believe me.  I thought they would think I was crazy.  I thought they would think I was mean.

My daughter was one of the first people that I told.  She was home for Christmas and so she’d certainly notice that I was upset and also that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas.

The first thing I told her was that I had decided that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas.  Her reaction:  “Thank God.  Seeing him is never pleasant.”

Over the years, she’d grown to just see him out of obligation.  I’d never left her alone with him, and he creeped her out with his comments about her being “pretty” and always asking her if she had a boyfriend.  She was worth more than that and she knew it.

Then I told her that it was because he’d molested me when I was a child and I just couldn’t see him anymore.

“Well now it all makes sense,” she said.

I asked her to explain.

“Remember that time you came home and found me in the bathtub and Grandpa was there and I had knocked my tooth out and you weren’t upset that I had knocked my tooth out but you were very upset.  I could never figure out why.  Now it all makes sense.”

Oh my God, yes.

When my daughter was about four years old, she had jumped down the stairs and knocked one tooth loose and the other out.  The dentist had said that the other one would probably not last.  About a week later, I had left my daughter with both of my parents, not thinking that anything like this could happen, as she didn’t need a bath and my father always left that to my mom anyway.  I came home to find my naked daughter crying in the tub, and my father with her, having knocked her other tooth out the rest of the way.  It was true, I was very upset, but not about the tooth.  I was upset at finding my naked daughter with my father.  Even I was surprised at my reaction.  I don’t think I really understood why I was reacting like that.  I hid things even from myself.

I was surprised at how vividly my daughter remembered this, and accurately.

Next, I needed to tell my son.

This caused me a great deal of anxiety.  My father had spoiled my son and they had been close through the years.  My son, obviously, is a boy, and my father showered him with attention and encouragement.  In other words, he treated him completely differently from my daughter, and from me.  I didn’t want to break his heart.  He’d looked up to his grandfather over the years and had had a special relationship with him.

Due to some complicated scheduling circumstances, I ended up telling him over the phone.  I had wanted to talk to him in person but it wasn’t going to happen.

So, I told him that I understood that he and his grandfather were close, and I didn’t want to interfere with that relationship.  I wasn’t going to ask him to not see him or to change anything, but I wasn’t going to see him anymore, and I told him why.  His reply was that he was surprised that he wasn’t more surprised.  That as he had gotten older, he said, he’d come to realize that his grandfather was a horrible person who also does good things.  And he told me that he was surprised that I’d put up with my father for as long as I had.

I’d say that was an accurate description.  That’s one of the things that makes this so confusing.  He’s done good things.  It would be easy if he were obviously evil all the time.  But then he’d never get what he wanted.  It was very confusing to me.

I had so little confidence, I’d been manipulated so thoroughly, that I’d expected no one to believe me.  Instead they believed me without question.  They knew me, and they knew my father, and my story made sense.  I told a couple other family members and they also believed me right away.  This was a revelation.

I made it through the initial admission to myself that I had been molested, something that I had buried for years.  (I didn’t have any new memories, I just realized that the things that my father had done to me were wrong.  His assurances that he wasn’t doing anything wrong and his denial had shaken my confidence in my gut feeling.)  I’d told some people and found assurance and support.  And I’d cut off contact with my father, at least on my end.  I felt better and more peaceful than I had in years.  It was a start.

 

A Moment of Clarity

Blog Post 2

It was as if something within me just snapped.  I’d reached some sort of tipping point where I had just had enough of my dad.  I was just done.  I didn’t want to see him anymore.  I didn’t care if that meant that every other member of the family would be angry with me, or not believe me.  I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I felt more peaceful and serene than I had felt in years.  And I felt relieved.  I would never have to see my father again. 

I had been putting up with him and suffering through heavy discomfort for years, fearful of what people would think.  Fearful that people, family members, would be angry with me.  Fearful that nobody would believe me.  That I’d be deemed “crazy” and blamed for hurting my father. 

But I didn’t care anymore.  At lease not enough to continue putting up with him.  The emotional price that I paid for tolerating him became higher than the imagined cost I might pay from estrangement. 

It seems that public opinion judges harshly those that choose to estrange themselves from their family.  Such people are seen as cruel and selfish.  I’m here to tell you that people that separate themselves from a family member likely have a very good reason for doing it.  But the person from whom they estrange themselves sure isn’t going to tell you that part of the story.

As I said before, my father molested me. 

I just hadn’t realized it.  I didn’t have a word for what he had done, and because of all the gaslighting, I doubted my perceptions. 

When I was probably five or six years old, my father used to take me in the shower with him on Saturday mornings.  I remember only a few details, but I can tell you this: no adult man should be taking his elementary age daughter with him into the close quarters of a shower stall.  I didn’t understand the significance of it at the time, but I’ve come to understand that this was his way of exposing himself to me.  And it wasn’t normal. 

Then there was the tickling.  He loved to tickle me.  I hated it and I said so.  He did it hard and it hurt.  When he would start, I would curl myself into a ball and try to protect my private areas, because he always went there.  He’d reach around my ribs for my breasts, or the area where breasts would be if I had any, since I was so young.  He’d poke me in the inside of my thighs, my butt, and the front of my pelvis.  It wasn’t tickling so much as him groping me disguised as tickling.  I hated this.  And I said so.  I’d tell him to stop.  That I didn’t like it.  Of course, he wouldn’t.  Because he liked it.  And he would tell me that I liked it.  I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t listen to me and stop.  I didn’t understand why he didn’t believe that I didn’t like it.  But now I understand that he did this for his own satisfaction. 

He was blatant about it, too.  He’d do this right in the living room in front of anyone.  It was sexual abuse disguised as tickling.  It was so confusing to me because with him telling me that I liked it, I thought that there was something wrong with me that I didn’t.  That fact that he wouldn’t stop taught me that I had no voice, and I didn’t matter.   That fact that he’d do this right in front of anyone let me to believe that it must be okay for him to do this, because nobody stopped him, in spite of my protests. 

To this day I’m not ticklish.

As I got older, I would sit in front of him and he would rub my back, which, looking back, that alone is a little weird.  But it was never just a back rub.  Especially as I approached my teenage years, he would reach around my ribs or over my shoulders for my breasts.  I would tell him to stop, and of course he’d say that he wasn’t doing anything.  I’d say I didn’t like that, and he’d tell me that I did.  Same old story.  And this happened right in the living room.  My father groping and copping a feel on his daughter.  On me.

It didn’t end there.  My father was overtly sexual with me and made no effort to hide it.  He’d call me “sexy” if I had a nice outfit on.  He’d smack my butt if I had on tight jeans.  He’d pinch my butt and laugh.  I’d tell him to stop and he’d laugh some more, saying he was just “goosing” me and it was okay. 

He behaved as if he had a right to my body. 

He’d try to catch glimpses of my naked body, too.  He used to come into my room and wake me up in the morning and try to rip the covers off of me, knowing full well that I wasn’t fully clothed underneath. 

These things didn’t stop until I was probably sixteen years old and was able to physically stand up to him and make him stop. 

I had had a hard time understanding what he had been doing to me, due to his gaslighting and his willingness to touch me right in front of other people.  But the body knows what the mind won’t admit.  That explains the visceral revulsion I felt toward him touching me at all as an adult.  That’s what led me to ask the internet, just before Christmas, if I had been sexually abused.  I learned that, even though he hadn’t actually raped or penetrated my vagina, that I had been molested by my father.  It was a moment of clarity that helped me to understand the disgust I felt whenever I was in his presence.  It made everything make sense. 

I called a couple friends for support and told them what my father had done to me, and that I didn’t want to see him anymore.  Since they hadn’t been gaslighted by him as I had been, they were immediately disgusted by his behavior.  One called him an evil monster.  They told me, “You never have to see him again.”  And that was it.  I was just done with him.  I wanted to be free.

Christmas

Christmas

I’ve always hated the Holidays.  Well, maybe not always, but I have a long history of hating them.  And it’s because the Holidays have a long history of bringing me misery rather than joy. 

I remember when I was quite young and the Sears Holiday Wish Book would arrive in the mail months before Christmas.  I’d spend hour upon hour perusing that magical catalog, dreaming about the magic of Christmas morning and getting glittering new toys that I had put on my Christmas List after discovering them in the catalog. 

After much anticipation, Christmas morning would finally arrive and I would open my gifts.  One year I got a Six Million Dollar Man.  Another year, a microscope and premade slides.  But after all the gifts were open, the excitement would start to wane.  I’d get a little tired and cranky.  Or I’d abandon my toys and build a fort out of the boxes.  And inevitably, my father would call me “ungrateful.”

After a few years of this, I would expect that this reaction would be coming from him, and I began to anticipate it.  I made sure to act grateful, whatever that was.  But it was impossible.  Because he’d catch me at some point without a smile on my face, and it would all be over.  I was ungrateful.  

In addition to my lack of gratitude, I didn’t love my father enough.  I knew this because he told me so.  He’d get weepy and say, “I can’t be happy because my kids don’t love me.”  I told him over and over that I loved him, and he said that I didn’t show it.  That I was a selfish brat that didn’t care about him.  I was crushed.  I wondered what I had done wrong, or if I was broken and incapable of showing love. 

On more than one occasion, I asked him what he wanted for Christmas, or his birthday, and his answer was, “I want a happy family, but I can’t have one because my kids are awful and they don’t love me.”  As I got older and he said to me, I realized that that was an awful lot for a grown man to put on a child.

At one time when I was quite young, I remember reading that each family can have their own birthday traditions, and you can even make up new ones.  A creative and artistic kid, I decided to make up a birthday tradition for our family.  I had a toy sewing machine that sewed with glue instead of thread.  I was too young to sew with a machine that actually had a needle in it.  Nevertheless, this glue sewing machine actually worked and I had made little stuffed animals with it and a purse.  For our new birthday tradition that I made up, I made a hat.  I think I modeled the hat after my rabbit fur Davey Crockett hat.  I had made it out of my favorite scrap material that someone had given me.  It was yellow and had cats on it.  The new tradition was to be that on someone’s birthday, they would be given this special hat to wear for their birthday dinner, because they were the birthday person and deserved a special hat.  Then they would keep the hat until the next birthday, when they would present the hat to the new birthday person.  Kind of like when last year’s Miss America presents the crown to the new Miss America.  The very first person to wear this hat would be my dad, as his was the first birthday after I made the hat and the new tradition. 

I really thought this would be a very special and unique thing for our family.  Our very own birthday tradition. But of course, that wasn’t how it went. 

My dad’s birthday came along and we had our usual birthday dinner in our dining room, which we only used for special occasions.  When it came time for the cake, the real celebration, I brought out my special hat for my dad to wear.  He was loathe to wear it.  I explained that it was a new, special tradition for our family that we were starting right then and he would be the first to wear the hat.  It was his job to watch over the hat until the next birthday, at which time he would present it to that person.  My birthday would be next.

My creative, childish, and yet fun idea of a hand made birthday hat was not met with the enthusiasm that I expected.  My father would barely wear the hat for a moment.  And when my birthday came only three weeks later, no hat for me.  I asked where it was and was only told that it was gone.  I was gutted.  I was looking forward to getting the birthday hat and then passing it on to my brother, who had the next birthday.  And the disappointment showed on my face.  And there I was again.  Ungrateful.  To him.  To my mother for all her hard work in making dinner.  Nothing was ever good enough for me. 

In adulthood I’d come a long way to distance myself from such unhappy childhood memories and to find parts of the holidays that I enjoy.  I’d put my father on “low contact” without telling him and managed to see him only on the required holidays a few times a year.  He would still find a way to ruin them, and as such, I dreaded the holiday season as it approached.  I hated to see my father.  I’m a relatively well functioning human being but being around him puts me into a tailspin.  I can’t stand to have him touch me.  At all.  Forget a hug.  His touch literally makes my skin crawl.  If he touches me at all, I go wash.  Spending any time with him at all makes me physically ill and will trigger a migraine that will last for days afterward. 

Nevertheless, this Christmas I managed to buy him a Christmas gift fairly early in my seasonal shopping and intended to have him over for some sort of dinner.  I called my brother and invited him to come to our celebration and he told me that he wouldn’t be able to make it as he’d be working that day.  But he’d let Dad know when Christmas dinner was so that he could come without him. 

He thought he was doing me a favor, but the mere thought of my dad at my house without my brother there to dilute the situation was more than I could handle.   My mood turned dark for the rest of the day and for days afterwards.  Even I was puzzled at the sudden and strong reaction that I had.  My dad is an awful person to be around but my reaction was visceral.

I did a little searching of my memory, and asked Google what those memories might mean.  For the first time, I finally found some clarity regarding my father and his treatment of me.  I looked up some things that he had done to me when I was a child, and the Internet was unequivocal:  my father had molested me.  Everything suddenly made sense.