I received the following comment on my last post: "I have no idea what the participle "loved" means in this context."
Good question. Here's my answer:
It's love, rather than loved. I feel love for my Dad currently. He's dead, but I'm not. I put myself first.
What is love in this context? A deep caring? An ancestral connection? An ineffable feeling that can't be fully erased? I don't know.
Before I forgave him I was angry, burning in Hell kind of angry. Consequently, his actions continued to hurt me. I was a victim. That made me more angry. There came a time when I understood that in order stop being a victim, I had to let go of my anger and leave him behind. It seemed like the best thing I could do for myself.
Forgiveness doesn't mean I think he's a great guy. It doesn't mean I accept his brutality as a good thing. Forgiveness means I stepped away and left his meanness with him. Sometimes forgiveness is the meanest sucker punch of all. You know, "yeah I have some bruises, but you should see the other guy."
It wasn't being hit that messed me up. The real damage was the feeling that I was unimportant, unloved, and somehow at fault or deserving of such treatment. In fact, his actions were never about me. I was an innocent kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Once I detached, I could see that he was a sad, pathetic person. I left him and his problems behind me. I no longer expected to have a good father. There was only ever going to be him. He had his own story, and his own father.
It's not a happy, feel good kind of love I feel for him. I'm sad for him, but that's not it. I know his story, his own tortured childhood. I know his father once beat him so badly his mother didn't know if he'd live through the night. No hospital, no calling the police, just the resigned maternal vigil.
Having said all this, I do believe there are some "sins of the father" that are unforgivable. Thankfully, he was no worse than mean and brutal.
I don't like him, but that's not an absence of love.
You give such a good description of your feelings. My paternal grandmother was a mean-spirited person. As a matter of fact when my children first saw a picture of her they asked who that mean-looking person was. She was mean to my mother and in turn uncaring toward us. I did not like her. At the same time I loved her because she was my grandmother. You are doing a good service by showing that a strong person can emerge from such a hurtful circumstance. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you, this expresses in a way how I feel love for my own father without actually liking so much about him.
ReplyDeleteTotally different circumstances but it was not until I could say "stop, you have no more power over me" that I was able to finally start the healing process. Forgiveness was never in the equation for me but closing the door helped a lot.
ReplyDeletePerhaps closing the door is really all we need to do. Leave the sins with the sinners. I think you are amazing, by the way.
DeleteThanks for this comprehensive answer to my question. I must confess that one of the burdens I bore during six years in the USA was the copious way all levels of US citizenry used the verb "to love". For me - a traditionally anal Brit - it was reserved for very rare occasions which embraced (and required) all aspects of a man/woman relationship from the mundane to the sublime. Americans, on the other hand, seemed to believe that just because one was related to someone - typically a father - one necessarily loved that person. It went with being born on that side of the Atlantic. And, of course, all children were lovable, no argument. As well as cars and garden sheds.
ReplyDeleteYour recent response to a tricky point I raised recently at Tone Deaf has drawn a longish comment which it avowedly deserves. First use in 2023 of "avowedly".
Here's a suggestion. Why not consider "affection"?
ReplyDeleteI don't feel affection towards him.
DeleteI never got angry with my father, I'm not an angry person. But I did wonder what I had to do to get him to accept me for what I was. In the end I gave up wondering, it was an impossible objective.
ReplyDeleteHe really missed out, you are quite wonderful.
DeleteGoodness, thank you for that!
DeleteBeautiful answer to a complex subject.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Linda. That means a lot.
DeleteIt is indeed a very deep and Beautiful answer to a complex topic. To Love the Unlovely is very complicated to even try to explain.
ReplyDelete