Dear Jim
A letter to my deceased and abusive (not really) father
Consider becoming a paid 💰 subscriber. This Substack is a labor of love, but the coffee it takes to write the Substack ain't free. ☕ Thanks!🙏
This letter is not meant to generate sympathy, though it likely will. I wrote it to both unburden my heart and for others out there going through something similar. You are not alone. It is not your fault if you are being abused. The fault is the abuser. I hope this letter helps!
Dear Jim,
I am writing this letter, over a decade after your death, to get a few things off my chest. I do not want to address you as anything having to do with terms like dad or father. Simply put: you do not deserve anything remotely resembling such terms. At best, you were a sperm donor and a terrible roommate. Even that is too generous. Terms like dad and father are reserved for men who, not only sire children, but who treat them with love and respect. You did neither. The aim of writing this letter is to feel better, to say what needs to be said, and to finally come to terms with the physical and psychological abuse you heaped on me, my mom, and my siblings. That being said, this letter only addresses my beefs with you. The rest isn’t my story to tell.
Let me first begin by acknowledging the good. It cannot be said that I lacked a roof over my head, or food on the table growing up. This is likely in large part due to the efforts of my mom to keep the household afloat, but it was, perhaps in a small part, because you kept a job for the entirety of my childhood. I did not go hungry or homeless. You deserve that much credit at least. My childhood could have been substantially worse, even though it was pretty bad.
What made it so bad? Since you loved to feign ignorance and confusion whenever confronted with wrongdoing, perhaps I can spell it out for you, though there are simply too many instances to remember and list. Perhaps a few highlights will do. Like the time when I was six or seven years old, watching you shove and strike a family member, corned in the kitchen, because they ‘made you mad.’ The screaming, the shoving, the punches, the threats. The ever present fear and sense of dread in the pit of my stomach knowing you were in a bad mood. Or tired. Or hungry. Always wondering what, if anything, would set you off that day. I have worked on myself for a number of years, and I still deal with anxiety regularly. I can trace it back to living in a warzone during my formative years.
I remember when I was about eleven or twelve. You woke me up to go on the milk route – (readers: Jim was a delivery driver who ran his own milk and grocery delivery business, making deliveries at night, and I would sometimes help him). The milk route was my hell. I hated it. It terrified me. I would pray and beg God to intervene, so I didn’t have to go. Sometimes I would taste metal in my mouth. I slept poorly if at all waiting for the inevitable ‘Jimmy, Jimmy’ whispered in the dark and signaling the beginning of the milk route for that night.
On that particular day, the start of the route went about as expected. At about three in the morning, we stopped for a delivery. The customer ordered a gallon of whole milk and some other stuff. I went to the side of the truck to grab the gallon of milk. It was cold, wet, and slippery. I accidentally dropped it. The gallon exploded everywhere. You came around from the other side of the truck. I explained what happened. It was an accident. You shoved me up against the truck and called me an ‘f****** idiot’. This wasn’t the first time. You did stuff like that a lot. I was tired of the bullying and abuse by that point. I pushed you back. I’ll admit this was imprudent of me. I was a big kid for my age, but you outweighed me by a lot. But I was sick of the abuse. And then, in response, you punched me in the side of the head. I barely saw the punch coming. Afterward, upon coming to, I remember you standing over me. You said if I ever touched you again you’d kill me. I believed you. I couldn’t move. I saw you walk to the other side of the truck. I heard you get in. I saw you drive away. My head was in the gutter. I could feel the sprinkler water on the back of my head as it drained off the lawn. It was in the middle of a suburban sprawl. There was no one around at that early hour. I didn’t have any money or a phone. What to do? Once I was able to get up, I began walking. Where? Home. There was nowhere else to go. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.
After about forty minutes of walking – or was it an hour? – you finally reappeared without saying a word. You handed me an ice pack for my face. You told me to keep my mouth shut. I wasn’t even to tell Mom about it. I kept my mouth shut until a few years ago. You succeeded in keeping your little secret under wraps for a long time. Not anymore. Not only did you succeed in scaring me silent. You scared me so bad that I was too scared to stand up to you when you abused others in the family too. I felt your power. I knew what you were capable of. I didn’t dare cross you for fear of waking up again somewhere else. It made me feel like the world’s biggest coward. Maybe I was a coward. Maybe I wasn’t. In any case, you had no right to do that to me, but you did. I hated watching you abuse people I loved, who treated me better than you did, but without the courage to stand up to you.
That kind of abuse and bullying—one example of many — is why I didn’t want anything to do with you. I hated you for a long time. For years I’ve walked around with fear and anxiety and only partly understood the origins of it: your abuse. For years I walked around with thinking that I was less of a man because I what I let you take from me. I felt guilt for not doing more to stop you. The guilt was only compounded by the constant reminder that I was ‘big for my age.’ It made me feel like I had a special burden to protect my loved ones because of being the first born and my size. That wasn’t fair.
I am writing this letter to get that stuff back. I am not afraid of you. I haven’t been afraid of you for a long time. But, for whatever reason, I have let that residual fear, anxiety, and dread push me around for far too long. I let it push me into some dark and dysfunctional places. I let it rob me of my self-confidence, peace of mind, joy, and harmony in the household. It has taken a long time and a lot of work to undo (some of? most of?) the damage that you caused. It was on you then. It is me now. You have been dead for years. I cannot blame you for my inaction. Consider this your final notice. I will no longer allow you to cast a dark shallow on what could be a bright future for my family and myself. This letter is the key that unlocked those handcuffs after so many years of bondage.
I no longer hate you. I do not condone what you did. It was wrong. And if there is a God, then you will rightly answer to him. We all will. That being said, you were clearly a sick man. You needed help. It doesn’t excuse what you did. The agony, pain, suffering, and dread. The family destroyed. Lives made worse. However, I forgive you. I am extending grace to you that you never extended to me. Not for your sake, but for mine. May God have mercy on your soul.
Your (not really) son,
Jimmy
I am so sorry you went through this. This was heartbreaking to read. I wish you all the best in healing and recovering.
Jimmy - I am so sorry you had to experience this type of behavior from a so-called Father. Believe me, I have stories too, and I find out more and more often many of us do! I hope this letter brought you some of the closure that you so deserve! Sending lots of love and hugs your way! You are forging your own path and he no longer has the power!