Forgiving when you can't forget

TW: mention of suicide, mental health, abuse

I've questioned my existence in this life more times than I care to admit. I was born to teenage parents. I was the unwanted burden. I was the dream stealer and life ruiner. At least as far as my father is concerned. I've suffered a lot of trauma throughout my short time on this earth, mostly at my father's hands. Physical and emotional. It planted within me a seed of self doubt and a chip on my shoulder that only grew as the years passed and life dealt me more crappy cards. Resentment grew within me like a disease. I soon became cold and jaded against everyone and everything. I would see happy families with fathers that doted on their daughter and I would burn with envy. I would scream and cry asking the Lord why I was brought into this world against my will. I didn't ask to be here. I didn't ask for this life. To be born to people who weren't ready for me and didn't want me. Who regularly made sure that I knew I was unwanted and unwelcome. My father grew into a raging alcoholic during my early childhood and I quickly became his punching bag. He would find any reason to pick a fight with me. He would corner me like a beaten dog and feed off of my fear. To this very day I cannot stomach the smell of alcohol. It brings me right back to those unbearable times when he would scream in my face with his rancid alcohol breath. It's also the reason that I don't drink. My resentment grew into outright hatred as an adult. He continued to be a constant deterrent in my life. Taking every opportunity to tear me down and remind me that I don't belong here and that I was to blame for the way that his life turned out. I was expelled from the house when I turned 14 years old. I couch hopped all the way up until I graduated, which he said I would never do. It's one of the few moments of my life that I am so proud of myself for. He was always looking for a reason to be able to say I told you so and I wasn't willing to give him the satisfaction of that being one of the things he was right about. It became almost unbearable when I started to have children of my own and he would tell me that I am a horrible mother and that I don't deserve my children. It's ironic though that the same man that abused his child would then tell that child they didn't deserve their own children. I internalized all of those things, creating many setbacks in my life and countless missed opportunities of happiness. It stole so much joy from me. Trauma is a funny thing, not funny ha ha but funny odd in the sense that it is usually a curse passed down from generation to generation like a disease. Parents who suffered trauma and didn't have the resources or the courage to get the help they needed, passing that trauma and worse down to their children and so on and so forth. I am a generational curse breaker. How I came to be such a thing took an immense amount of courage that I didn't know I possessed. I had a fierce desire to give my children better than I got and I wanted my children to come from a healthy and happy home. I remember the day that I decided I was going to be different. The day I chose peace over revenge and the day I decided to look at things from an entirely different perspective. My father was a monster in my eyes. He behaved like one. How could I ever forgive someone who had done and said such terrible things to me? The thought was repulsive. In my eyes he didn't deserve my forgiveness. He had never even apologized to me a single time for anything he had ever done. On top of being an alcoholic he was also a narcissist. His idea of an apology was bribery and manipulation, but never an actual genuine apology. To forgive someone, nevertheless someone who isn't sorry for their actions, is the single hardest thing I've ever had to do. It's a daily struggle and requires many times of repeating it over and over again through the anger and the tears and the hurt. I would ask my mother all the time why she stayed with him, why she allowed him to treat us the way he did. She always saw something in my father that no one else could see. She was trauma bonded to him and that muddied the waters on her perspective of him. On top of years of mental abuse and brainwashing. She also knew things about him that I hadn't. You see, I learned that my father and I weren't so different growing up. He went through a lot of the same things that he put me through. That's where the generational curse comes in. It's a vicious cycle that very few ever get out of. I looked back at all the times I could remember his interactions with his own parents and realized that it wasn't all that different. Alcoholics and druggies, right down to my aunt, uncle, grandma and grandpa on my father's side of the family. I learned that my father's father was married to my grandma who was actually my dad's step mother and that my father's mother was then remarried to my father's uncle we grew up calling papa but he was actually our great uncle/papa. The family dynamic on my father's side was extremely messy. My aunt suffered from severe mental disturbances and eventually committed suicide and my nana died from a drug overdose. When I took a step back and looked at things from a different perspective my dad didn't look so much like a monster, just another child that grew up in a broken family and became a broken adult, passing that on to his children as well. Projecting his pain and hurt onto all of us. Does it excuse and undo what he had done to me? No. However, part of growing up and choosing peace over the pain is being able to see outside of yourself. To have the ability to look past the pain and the hurt and see other's pain and hurt as well. I remember a time that he had really cut me deep emotionally, this was my major turning point. He had been drunk and called me a prostitute among other horrible and hurtful things. In that moment I was so angry. I wanted to hurt him the way he had hurt me. I wanted him to feel the way I felt. I typed out and deleted so many angry and hurtful words. In the end I chose peace over revenge, I said "Dad I forgive you, but I don't want you to be part of my life." Those are the hardest words I've ever said. In my mind though, I knew doing to him what he had done to me and what was done to him won't change things or make them better. I can make more of a difference in this life by being the bigger person and not stooping to that level. He still isn't part of my life, but looking at things from a different perspective when I wanted to brand him a monster for the rest of his days enabled me to break the generational curse and let go of the anger and resentment in my life and choose peace. I'm hoping by telling this piece of my story and how I overcame the odds that I am somehow able to help others that are dealing with the same pain and hurt. If you're reading this I hope you choose peace and not to allow the choices of others to steal your joy in life. I hope you are able to step outside of yourself and try to see things from another perspective in order to move forward and heal. In my opinion forgiveness is the hardest thing in this world to give but the peace that comes with it is so freeing.