Thoughts on my Dad

My thoughts have been intensely ambivalent since my family died, and I feel guilt for every thought I have concerning my family. I eventually couldn't stand it anymore, and sat down and typed what I felt as if no one would ever read it. This piece of writing is easily one of the most honest things that has come out of me.

November 28th, 2009

I don’t know what to think about him. So I have to write, because I’m his daughter. I’m his daughter, and this is what he gave me. This is in my blood, right from him.

I think he’s a fucking coward, for taking such a cheap and horrible way out. But I think he’s so brave for being the only one of us to have the guts to take a stand.

I know he loved us with everything in him, so that it consumed him, so that he’d commit the most horrible act, because saving one of us meant more to him than his own life. But I doubt that he could have any love for us at all for taking away every single thing that we ever loved.

I think he’s a murderer. He is a murderer.
But I think he’s some sort of saviour. Some sort of euthanizer.

I think he’s the truest of men, for having it in him to make decisions for his family, and take care of them in ways they never could themselves. But I think he might as well be a eunuch for the cowardice it takes to not be able to face something like bankruptcy.

I’m thankful to him for ending such a horrible situation. But I’m astonished he would rather give up on our family than fight through more hardships.

I know he loved Mommy. He dedicated everything in his life to her, until the very end. But I can’t help but think he got some sort of satisfaction out of killing her. And out of killing D*****. Even though I know it hurt him so much that he felt it in every square inch of his body, I know that some part of him was satiated by killing them.

He’s the man who raised me, who loved me, who protected me. He’s my Daddy, and I’m his little girl. We have the same birthday. We have the same soul. We understand each other like no one else.

And me, it was me that he hurt more than anyone, and he knew it, he knows it. That’s why the suicide note was addressed to me first, to me before the elder, to the T before the S. It was always chronological, always, it was “D*****, S**** and Tee,” and that was fine, because I was the baby, I was meant to be at the end. He addressed it to me first because he knew that all of the pain was targeted at me. He knew that. He knew that this would affect S****’s life, his life, it but was me that this would kill. Not my life, but me. And somehow addressing it to me is supposed to make me feel like he loved me?

How could he possibly love me? He knew what this would do to me. I was supposed to be that much more special to him. With all we shared… we were the artists. We were the Pisces. We were the singers. We shared stories and songs and sports and introversion and somehow, on some level, we both saw life in the same way. I was the one he sent to Greece, and France, and Egypt and I was the one he sent to debating provincials and Envirothon internationals and I was the one he drove out of town for plays and concerts. I was his little girl. It wasn’t that he loved me more, but he knew we had a special bond, and he treated that with respect. I thought he was the sort of man and the sort of Daddy who would sacrifice himself for me, completely. I think, somehow, he thinks he did. And sometimes I see it that way. But sometimes – most of the time – I see it as him being too afraid to sacrifice himself for us anymore.

This whole situation…I feel so protected, and so betrayed, and so emancipated, and so abandoned.

There’s that word that that Distress Centre exec woman suggested to me: ABANDONED.

I had never even considered it, but it fit so, so perfectly. I feel so abandoned – and not just by Daddy. By all of them. I blame all of them. Somehow, they were all a part of it. By suggesting the mass suicide. By not being strong enough to fight past their problems, like I feel I had done. For falling victim to it all. For fighting. For always fighting with each other. They were the ones. Mommy and D*****, they started all of it. It was all them. We were the victims. Daddy, S**** and I. We were the victims. And Daddy stood up for us. He stood up for us in the end.

I love myself for getting through all of this. But I hate myself so deeply for all of these horrible thoughts that are always in me. They’re all horrible – because some defend him, some defend the act, and all the rest are affronts to my love for him. There’s not a single thought in my head that can justify it all. I either love him and love the act, or hate him and hate the act.

It’s always been this: choosing between my Mommy and my Daddy. Always. Auntie J***** understands that. And it’s still not over. I can’t love my Daddy because it means I think it’s okay that he murdered my mother – he stabbed her to death. I can’t love my Mommy because it means agreeing that I should take her side against him. I yell at them. I look up to the heavens and I yell at them. Often. I say “this is your fault” and I say “you’d better damn well be getting along now” and I blame them for it all. I don’t blame my Daddy, I blame all of them. And I yell because it makes me feel better. Because it makes me feel like all of the mistakes I’m making now are justified. It makes me feel like I can do whatever shit I want to and it’s all their fault. It’s their fault for screwing me up and it’s their fault for leaving me to deal with it on my own. I yell at them up in heaven or maybe it’s hell or whatever because I have so much anger in me and I don’t know what to do with it. I do things I know they wouldn’t approve of and for a second I feel guilty because I know they’re watching, but then I turn my head upwards and I say (the same words every time) “You know what? FUCK you! You LEFT me!” And then there are the times that the only way I can get through the day is by imagining that my Mommy is right next to me stroking my hair or my hand or that my Daddy is smiling at me with that silly, knowing grin that he and I always shared with moments like “Hello, DaDA” because otherwise I would just crumble.