"The scars that you can't see are the hardest to heal." ~ Astrid Alauda
One lazy Sunday morning while I was in bed I picked up my cell phone, flipped through my Facebook news feed, and decided to google my parents' names.
I am estranged from my parents and have not had a great relationship with them for over fifteen years. However, there is a part of me that will always take care of her.
I first googled my mother's name and found the usual articles about her dance classes and her name on the church and ward bulletin boards. From all I could find, she seemed fine.
Then I went to Google, my father's name. The first point I came across was an obituary posted on the website of a company that provides cremation and funeral services. There was no actual obituary, however, just a few pictures of a much younger man and a profile of a much older man.
Was this my father's obituary? It couldn't be, could it? In shock, I convinced myself that it wasn't his obituary, but I couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that it was.
For the past month I had a feeling that something was wrong, that something terrible had happened or was about to happen. At the time, I attributed these feelings to work stress and the global pandemic.
When I learned of the death of one of my mentors who had been like a father to me, I attributed these feelings to this experience. Could I have been wrong?
Later that morning I decided to look for my father's name in the local online newspaper obituary. His name came up immediately, and it was how I learned of his death to my horror.
When I read the obituary I was in shock. He had been dead for a month when I started having those intense, unsettling feelings of foreboding, as if something terrible had happened. It all made sense.
My full name, which I had legally changed a few years ago, was mentioned in the obituary among its surviving relatives, which quickly turned my feelings of shock into anger. Did my family think I didn't care? Did you think I had no right to know of his death?
I reached out to members of my estranged support group to learn that many others have learned of a parent's death in the same way.
Years earlier, I was afraid I might find out that one of my parents was going through Google. However, I had shrugged off the fear and forced myself to believe that someone in my family would tell me if one of my parents had passed away.
In the days and weeks that followed, I continued to google my father's name. As I read tributes from friends and other family members, I realized that I didn't know the person they were describing.
He has been described as "a simple religious man who was a welcoming neighbor, a devoted friend, a family man, and an excellent father". To me, however, he was none of those things, and as I continued reading the honors, sadness and anger overwhelmed me and I was forced to reflect on the painful relationship I had with him.
In kindergarten I remember that he kept telling me: "You are as stupid as a job." Later, after visiting his father, he repeated his father's hurtful words: "You are a wild hair and you will come to a sad end."
He repeated these words regularly throughout our relationship. Every mistake I made has been answered with harsh judgments such as, "You will never be good at it, you just wasted your time, you would never mind."
When I failed, he rubbed my failure in my face, and to this day, failure is one of my greatest fears, even though I have become a somewhat successful professional and academic.
He kept telling me:
"It would be much easier to take care of yourself if you did well with your studies."
"You are illiterate, you are a delinquent, you are a fool and you are an embarrassment."
“You will never mind; You will end up with a minimum wage job with angry, stupid people. "
“You are fat, you are lazy, you are unable to concentrate and you waste your time with this stupid piano; you'll never mind that pounding. "
After I broke up with my first serious friend, my father said to me: “What do you expect? A person like you will naturally have problems with their relationships. I assume that you will face serious problems in your marriage as well. "
As I was preparing to move to university, he said to me, "If you fail, don't expect to come back here, just find a minimum wage job and support yourself."
It took me years to realize that comments like this are verbal abuse!
Verbal abuse can be camouflaged in the form of a parent insulting a child in order to make it better, to push themselves more, to lose weight, or to enter a certain field. It can be disguised as caring or trying to push someone to be a better version of themselves. Regardless of the parent's motive, insults and defeat are indeed verbal abuse, and no number of justifications can change that.
Verbal abuse can have devastating effects on a child's life, and these effects can be felt into adulthood.
During my childhood and adolescence, my parents' abusive comments made me believe that no one would want me and that I was not good enough for anyone. This limiting belief prevented my ability to make friends. As a result, I spent much of my childhood and adolescence alone, playing the piano, or hanging out with my pets.
The friendships I made were often one-sided because I made it very easy for people to take advantage of me, because I believed that I had to give and give in order to be worthy of the friendship.
I also feared failure more than anything and became very concerned in any setting where I might fail. This prevented me from trying new things and only engaged in activities that I knew I was good at.
It was only as a teenager that I met a mentor who not only saw my work, but loved and cared for me as if I were his own daughter. For the first time in my life, I had an adult to support me other than my grandmother and grandfather who believed in me and reminded me of my worth and skills every day.
"You are good, you are clever and highly intelligent, you are able to do whatever you want to do," he told me. At first I didn't believe him, but over time I slowly began to see myself through his eyes.
He talked to me like a loving parent would have. When I failed, he didn't make fun of me. Instead, he encouraged me to think about what I had learned from the experience and how I could do better in the future.
He distilled in me the basis of the shaky self-confidence that enabled me to have the courage to apply to university. Without this relationship, I probably wouldn't be where I am today because I wouldn't have had the courage to break free of the verbally abusive narrative my parents taught me to believe or challenge that narrative.
When I read attributes about my father in tributes from people who knew him, I was filled with a feeling of longing. Had my father been the man described in these honors, we could have had a healthy relationship and I would not have had to make the painful decision to cut him out of my life.
At the same time, these honors forced me to accept that we are many things to different people. To some people we are a wonderful friend, kind neighbor, and a loving parent; to others, we are a rude fool, self-centered person, and abusive or negligent parent. Each of us has the right to remember the dead as they experienced them and to honor their memory as we see fit.
Years after I cut my parents out of my life, I silently forgave them the pain they inflicted on me and I worked to let go of the pain from the past. However, at times I imagined I could imagine what a healthy adult relationship with my father might be like.
I imagined mutually respectful philosophical discussions, long walks, trips to distant places and above all not as an unpleasant failure, but as a successful adult who deserves love and acceptance.
My last conversation with my father before the death of my grandmother was positive, which only inspired these fantasies. Yet, in those fits of fantasy, I was forced to accept my father for who he was and the painful fact that some people are simply unable to be what we need them to be.
We can choose to stand up for a relationship that will never be, or for the person to be something they are not, or we can choose not to accept them for who they are, and accept us despite their abuse. But that means we have to let go and accept that the future has time that we can never have together.
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