Father and daughter relation

My father and I are talking more these days. We didn't used to. But at least now we're both willing to have a relationship. Willing to heal the past. Willing to move on. Our tentative beginning would not exist if I hadn't changed. I had to forgive my father before I could open my heart again. At first, even calling him "dad" was strange, and it is still hard to say "I love you."

Nearly all my life I've struggled to forgive my father. He left when I was in the first grade, leaving my mother alone to raise my two older brothers and me. It was my most painful memory from childhood. He and my mother had had a terrible fight and he'd pushed her against the wall. Angry and hurt and scared, she'd told him to get out.

I clutched my daddy's leg and begged, "Please don't leave, daddy. Please don't go."

Sobbing, my father walked out the door. I watched as he banged his fists against the hood of his car. Through his tears I heard him say, "I'm no good. I'm no good."

My life changed forever that day. I have few good memories from childhood. What I remember most are the nights my dad didn't come home, the days he locked himself for hours in his den, the times he and my mom viciously tore one another apart with ugly words in front of their three children.

The years that followed my father's leaving were tangled with frustration, sadness and resentment as my brothers and I were forced into early adulthood and my mother was forced to juggle a full-time job and single parenthood while battling a nervous breakdown.

After the divorce, I saw my father occasionally, but our brief visits eventually stopped. As time passed, my father and I grew apart. I began to despise him, teaching myself to forget the few happy times we shared and learning how to deny my pain. Sometimes, I even told my friends that my father was dead.

I cursed him when, at age 13 in a halfhearted suicide attempt, I swallowed a vial of sleeping pills. And when my mother remarried an abusive man, I swore I would never forgive my dad.

Little did I know that my father's actions would not only riddle my mother's life but my own young adult life as well. Untrusting and terrified of abandonment, I was heartbroken each time a casual relationship didn't work out. Emotionally scarred, I withdrew from close friends and family who tried to help. Unwilling to accept the past and move on, I went through life with a crippled heart.

It wasn't until last spring, at the age of 26, that my life took a sharp turn for the better.

My father's mother had just died, and a half-brother I'd never met tried to contact me. I knew only his name, Tony Doyle. He was a son from my father's first failed marriage.

Tony, too, was abandoned by our father as a child. When Tony and I met, there was an instant bond. In connecting with the half-brother who had felt the same emotional abandonment as I had, I slowly began to heal. Tony's life, like mine, was half empty with no father to provide love, support and guidance.

As our relationship grew, Tony told me over and over to let go of my anger toward our father.

"Dad could die tomorrow," he said. "You have to accept the past and move on with your life."

Without telling my father, I forced myself to retrace his past with the hope that I would discover why he left us, why he left me. I started by reuniting with my his two sisters. Together, Tony and I visited my dad's childhood home where I sat for hours one Saturday listening to Aunt Helen and Aunt Irene tell stories about what happened to them as children.

I learned my father was severely abused as a child. His parents were heavy drinkers. I found out that his childhood, like mine, was riddled with loneliness and fear.

Still, my discovery did not excuse my father's actions. His selfish path had destroyed any possible connection with his only daughter. He had missed spending time with me on holidays, caring for me when I was sick, watching me grow into a young woman. He was a no-show, a man without clear conscious, a dead-beat, a failed father.

But learning about his past helped me in some ways begin to understand him and, in so doing, to forgive him. Perhaps he feared he would abuse me just as he'd been abused. Or maybe he felt he had to battle his demons alone.

His reasons for leaving don't matter anymore. There's nothing I can do to change yesterday. All I can do is learn from my father's mistakes and break the cycle on my own.

My father must live with his own demons, his guilt. I have no demons or guilt. Therefore, I can accept the past and move on.

Even knowing this, forgiving my father is still a daily struggle, an internal war between wanting a father to love and hating the father who left me. At times, I still resent him. And I often wonder what life would have been like with a daddy to tuck me in at night, mend my first broken heart and hold me safely in his arms through life's tough challenges.

Forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean forgetting. I will never forget the day my father left, but I now know I was only hurting myself by holding on to my rage. By failing to release past memories and go on with my life, I was the one who suffered.

Last Father's Day I called my dad. He asked about my job. I asked him about the weather in Colorado.

Then he asked, "Do you forgive me?"

"Yes," I said, and truly meant it.

My dad and I are talking more these days. We didn't used to. It is still hard to say I love you, but saying it is getting easier. I hope my relations with my father gets better every day and every time.