Sunday 24 October 2010

a letter to my father after our disasterous lunch meeting yesterday.

I've thought hard whether I should post this letter which I wrote at 2.30AM last night after a disastrous lunch meeting with my father and his wife, yesterday.I've decided to post it because i've shared so much with you and also kept aside some of the realities of my relationship with my dad.I wish to stress that I will not be posting this letter to my dad. I have written it for my own benefit to try and release some of the hurt I am feeling about our failed relationship.



Dear Dad,

I no longer want to be a scape goat within your relationship. It serves no purpose in my life.It seems to me that when you met you both were understandably desperate to bond with another person. Sadly that appears to have been based on macabre feelings of victimisation, bitterness and blame towards other people for the unhappiness in your lives. Me, being top of your list, dad.

I understand that it is impossibly painful for either of you to even think about this as even being a possibility that you may have wasted years manipulating one another and me by feeding poison and disdain towards me to maintain what seems to be the main premise of your union - blaming others for all that has ever been bad in your world. And I'm the most obvious target for your sinister games considering my wayward years.I am no longer the mess that you are accustomed to and that you both appear to need me to be in order to relate to me, but more importantly, to relate to each other on the subject of me.

I am willing with love to let you both continue in your comfort zone and have no part in your lives. This, I feel would be easier for you both so you can continue your days thinking and feeling the negative way you do towards me.Like this you will not have to deal with the changes in dynamics now I am sane and I'm making an effort in my life. (No doubt you will scoff at that statement, too.)

I am now beginning to understand that in order for you both to not ever have to accept your own behaviours and attitudes, I must bale out and allow you to confirm what in your own minds you believe to be true, that I am the greatest failure in every way that a human being can be. Thankfully, I don't live my life daily feeling this towards myself or towards the two of you. Underneath an exterior of 'everything being ok', if I did think so poorly, under that exterior, I would be a lonely and bitter person which I try not to be - but this situation as highlighted at lunch on saturday is making me become increasingly despondent and angry towards both of you.

I chose to face who I am and what I became and I look to my future with hope. And more than anything I don't want to be part of some peculiar unspoken tryst between two people who have not ever taken a moment to even consider that some times they are wrong.I regret deeply the hurt I have caused you both. I must live with this legacy for the rest of my life. I know you will chose not to believe this and unfortunately there is nothing I can do to change your views on this or on me. You will never trust me as I won't trust you.
I am realising this, painful as it is, I'm realising that you need me to be a mess in order to feel that you are right in your disdain of me and the majority of what i do or say. Episodes such as saturday lunch time only prove to you both that you are right. This is a sad state of affairs for me to experience my father and his wife always searching to blame me and never having the humility to look at your own part. Perhaps drinking doesn't help either of you in this.

I also understand that the better I'm becoming - the harder I see it is for *my step-mum* in particular to feel secure within your relationship since your perpetually negative views, have over the years, helped the two of you to feel 'united.' And now? Well, things are much better for me and so now your perception of me is being challenged which clearly challenges how the two of you communicate with each other about me - and that must be unsettling. Its clear that *my step-mum* is struggling with this.

As you can see I don't trust either of you, in the same way as you don't trust me. Daddy, we could have tried harder had you let go of the strings that bind you to *my step-mum*, for even an hour, so we could have been a father and daughter together over a coffee. As you're reading this I can imagine you shaking your head and telling yourself how you couldn't have done that because you're 'frightened' of me. It's time for the record to change. The reality is you just don't want to establish a healthy relationship with me, that, or maybe *my step-mum* doesn't want us to have our own relationship.I will no doubt never know.Dad, I'm sure you will be angry yet upset by this letter because in spite of all our failings we both love each other deeply. And quite predictably *my step-mum* will coax the sadness out of you and together you can once again feel villified and safe within your bitterness towards me.

If that what makes you both feel secure and happy then so be it. I understand. Believe me I see and understand far more than either of you realise.

In the spirit of me continuing my personal growth and emotional development and my desire to minimise the hurt in my life (and yes, you are not the only people that feel let down) - I think it best that something changes between us. Humility is the greatest of characteristics and I feel that I must admit defeat and retreat gracefully in order for you both to continue to be united in your habitual complaints about me.

I've often wondered how two people can so successfully avoid looking at the common denominator that has caused the breakdowns of a number of your closest relationships. But I accept that it is fear that stops you both from uniting in your sorrow instead of bitterness, for Your attitudes and Your actions towards, me, *my step-mum's mother*, *my step-mum's oldest son, his wife and their child,* * my father's brother* Thankfully *step-mum's youngest son* started talking to you again after a few years absence and for those years. There is something not right, and as usual for the two of you, somehow I shall be the cause of all of the above breakdowns. God only knows what you've told *my half brother* about me. I dread to think. But of course there is a reason you didn't encourage us to meet or have each others addresses so we could write before we finally met at your wedding vows renewal party.

One day, perhaps you will both be able to face your truths and not allow yourselves to drown in your grief as a result.I will still be there for you. We have All played a part. You, *my step-mum*, and me, and acknowledgment of this from you would have been greatly appreciated. I love you more than you will ever accept, dad, and it is tragic that you never really allowed me a much wanted chance for you to get to know the good qualities that I inherited from you.


You will be in my heart and bound to me until the day I die.



With love, always,

Your daughter,


Clare