letter to my (dead) dad

TW: references to abuse and sexual assault


Hey dad,

How's the afterlife? Is it too much for me to ask if it's hell? I hope it's hell. If karma exists, I really fucking hope it's hell.

I thought you dying would free me from the things you did in this life. I was wrong. I'm not free. I'm angry. I'm blindingly, piss on your grave, light all you possessions on fire angry.

Not that you'd care. Caring was never your strong point. But it matters to me that I'm angry. It matters that you got through 81 years of life without having to deal with any fucking consequences for the things you put people through. It matters that mum never left you, because she was too scared to.

I wish desperately that she had, and then we wouldn't be having this one-sided conversation. I wished she'd said, "okay, fine, you go to that", every time you threatened to kill yourself when you got even the slightest notion she was going to leave you.

I wish that marital rape wasn't the norm for your generation. I wish I wasn't the only one of your kids that knows exactly what you did to my mother, because I caught you, though exactly zero of us ever talked about it. And now it's too fucking late for me to talk about, and mum won't ever talk about it out loud unless she's fall in a bush drunk, and the only time I've ever seen her that written off was when I was 16, and everyone in the house in possession of a penis fled from the crazy drunk lady that threatened to cut off your penis. Exactly zero of us talked about that night either.

The way I see it, the "head" of the family is supposed to be a protector, and that's something you never were.

You controlled and criticized and manipulated, isolated and abused us, and dragged us all over this ridiculously large fucking country, under the delusion that you knew what was best for any of us, when you never knew us at all.

I'll never forget the time we almost came to blows. I regretted not punching you that night. Still do. Though odds are you would have kicked my arse, because you were a boxer in your youth, and I didn't know any self defense outside of 6 months worth of karate when I was 12. I did scare you that night, though, when I shoved you back, and made you fall. I liked that. It was the closest thing I ever had to power in my 15 years of life.

And let's not get me started on your homophobia. Though the upside is that I finally found the courage to leave home, even though I ultimately traded one shit home life for another one, but information is only useful to me in hindsight.

How it must have pissed you off, that the daughter who lived, liked other girls. Not that you were impressed when I came back home pregnant at 20, because homelessness with a newborn wasn't an option for me.

You weren't a good grandparent either. But I didn't expect that you would be. I'm glad my son will be spared your presence in his life as he grows older, even if he did make you smile like he was made of sunshine.

I fucking hate you. And I hate that I loved you, because you were, despite all my efforts otherwise, important to me. And I wish so much that you weren't. Hating you doesn't save me. I wish I was indifferent instead. But I'm not, so even in death, you still haunt me, and taunt me.

I need to find a way to let it all go.

I don't know how yet. I don't forgive you.

Maybe I'll always hope your afterlife is hell. It's as much as you deserve.