Letter to my father
Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 7:34 am
Dear Dad,
I'm having a hard time these days. I know you know that I am. Your silence is hurting me, though. You've always believed that there are some things in life we all need to learn on our own, without anyone's help. I know this. I understand this. I've done my best to at least be able to distinguish what those things are.
Don't get me wrong, Dad; I'm grateful for many of the life lessons I've learned from you. I won't list them here as I've often told you what those lessons are that have shaped my own soul in a most beautiful way. Much of the beauty in me I inherited from you. I will always be thankful for that beauty. But, more--much more--than your approval, I crave your affection.
It's hard to love what you do not know. Whenever, in the course of my life, I've tried to show you who I truly am--who this person is that you and Mom brought into the world--you turned your face away. This is something I can handle when it comes from strangers. But, with you, I'll need to practice a while yet before the pain of your emotional disregard no longer affects me. Frankly, I may never succeed in doing so. Is this my own failing? Is it yours? I don't know.
It took me years to understand (and, in this, I was helped by your wife--a mother to me as much as she is to her own child) that your being a "doctor of the soul" has little bearing on your ability to express your affection to your own children. My little brother and I, it seems, were "special cases." You worked for the betterment of children's emotional lives for more than thirty years... while the heart of your own flesh and blood withered and grew dark. There was a time in my life, a time filled with rage--against the world, against you--when I thought I would never be able to forgive you for having shut us out of your own heart. I know better now. You are a person who shut out from your heart not just your kids but the world at large. I see this now when I look at you sitting in your living-room chair as you gaze longingly out the window at the mountains and the lake. The world you pine for has not much room for people. Messy, chaotic, unpredictable, needy, "bleedy" people. No surprise, then, that your world has not much room for me. I don't know why you're like this; you've never told us. I can only suppose that, somewhere in your own past, the world you seek to flee has hurt you as well. For this reason, I cannot find it in me to condemn you for having allowed us to grow up in what I will always call an "emotional desert." Hence, I forgive. You've raised us as best you knew how, above and beyond the limits of your own personality.
I've always looked up to you. You were my wise old man sitting at the top of the mountain. Yet, the teachings you gave us from that lofty perch no longer have the power to carry me through the turmoil in my own heart and soul. I want from you that you could tell me that you love me as you take me into your arms and hold me as though my own life were no less precious and significant than yours. But that will never be. And so I mourn. Even my little brother is an adult all numb inside.
I will say to you what you cannot say to me: I love you. And when I say "you," I'm not referring to the child psychologist nor to the lonely man sitting in his living-room chair staring out at a world he can no longer love but rather the "you" that you've managed to hide from everyone around you that loves you, in pretty much the same way I've hidden my own true self from those who love me. Maybe it's come to this because I no longer want to hide my beautiful self. There is a forum on the internet I occasionally visit--I've told you about it--that has given me the strength and courage to become more fully who I am. And who I am is a beautiful person... one I sincerely hope you'll get a chance to know before you go. You need only look in my direction. I'll be here, waiting.
Happy Father's Day.
Love,
CJ
I'm having a hard time these days. I know you know that I am. Your silence is hurting me, though. You've always believed that there are some things in life we all need to learn on our own, without anyone's help. I know this. I understand this. I've done my best to at least be able to distinguish what those things are.
Don't get me wrong, Dad; I'm grateful for many of the life lessons I've learned from you. I won't list them here as I've often told you what those lessons are that have shaped my own soul in a most beautiful way. Much of the beauty in me I inherited from you. I will always be thankful for that beauty. But, more--much more--than your approval, I crave your affection.
It's hard to love what you do not know. Whenever, in the course of my life, I've tried to show you who I truly am--who this person is that you and Mom brought into the world--you turned your face away. This is something I can handle when it comes from strangers. But, with you, I'll need to practice a while yet before the pain of your emotional disregard no longer affects me. Frankly, I may never succeed in doing so. Is this my own failing? Is it yours? I don't know.
It took me years to understand (and, in this, I was helped by your wife--a mother to me as much as she is to her own child) that your being a "doctor of the soul" has little bearing on your ability to express your affection to your own children. My little brother and I, it seems, were "special cases." You worked for the betterment of children's emotional lives for more than thirty years... while the heart of your own flesh and blood withered and grew dark. There was a time in my life, a time filled with rage--against the world, against you--when I thought I would never be able to forgive you for having shut us out of your own heart. I know better now. You are a person who shut out from your heart not just your kids but the world at large. I see this now when I look at you sitting in your living-room chair as you gaze longingly out the window at the mountains and the lake. The world you pine for has not much room for people. Messy, chaotic, unpredictable, needy, "bleedy" people. No surprise, then, that your world has not much room for me. I don't know why you're like this; you've never told us. I can only suppose that, somewhere in your own past, the world you seek to flee has hurt you as well. For this reason, I cannot find it in me to condemn you for having allowed us to grow up in what I will always call an "emotional desert." Hence, I forgive. You've raised us as best you knew how, above and beyond the limits of your own personality.
I've always looked up to you. You were my wise old man sitting at the top of the mountain. Yet, the teachings you gave us from that lofty perch no longer have the power to carry me through the turmoil in my own heart and soul. I want from you that you could tell me that you love me as you take me into your arms and hold me as though my own life were no less precious and significant than yours. But that will never be. And so I mourn. Even my little brother is an adult all numb inside.
I will say to you what you cannot say to me: I love you. And when I say "you," I'm not referring to the child psychologist nor to the lonely man sitting in his living-room chair staring out at a world he can no longer love but rather the "you" that you've managed to hide from everyone around you that loves you, in pretty much the same way I've hidden my own true self from those who love me. Maybe it's come to this because I no longer want to hide my beautiful self. There is a forum on the internet I occasionally visit--I've told you about it--that has given me the strength and courage to become more fully who I am. And who I am is a beautiful person... one I sincerely hope you'll get a chance to know before you go. You need only look in my direction. I'll be here, waiting.
Happy Father's Day.
Love,
CJ
Love 
