(no subject)

Last night was possibly not my best night ever. Dinner with S., and we ended up talking about my biological father, briefly -- I met her through him, and they're still friends -- and then I came home and cried myself to sleep. S. knows him as a fundamentally good person, who has some very deep-set flaws; I know him as an abusive, manipulative, pathological liar. Neither of our portraits are entirely accurate, I think, we never know another person fully, but I cannot, cannot, cannot reconcile with her friend without encountering the man who has done me more damage than I care to admit. It is unfortunate that they inhabit the same person.

I did not do this to be cruel. I have tried, so hard, over the last six years, to behave with honor and dignity; I have not always succeeded, I admit that. I have caused hurt. But that was never my intention. Any cruelty, any hurt, I have inflicted, has been the byproduct of my desperation to survive.

I'm sick of this being my important story. I wish she hadn't brought it up. I'm sick of it. Because you know, I am comfortable with what I have done -- I could have done it better, yes, probably, but I did it as well as I could at the time, and I don't regret it, I wouldn't take it back, and I don't want to keep rehashing it.

Lin was talking about Toxic Parents, and there was one thing she quoted that really struck home for me: "There's no point in talking to my parents, because it won't do any good." I've given up on him. I really believe that he is incapable of learning what it is I want and need and deserve from him, and I also believe that it is not my place to teach him.

Reposted from IJ, 20 March 2009