I spent two years enumerating my father’s flaws, constantly updating the tally, as if reciting every resentment, every real and imagined act of cruelty, of neglect, would justify my decision to cut him from my life. Once justified, I thought the strangling guilt would release me. That I could catch my breath.
But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people.
I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms. Without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I learned to accept my decision for my own sake, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it. It was the only way I could love him.
When my father was in my life, I perceived him with the eyes of a soldier, through a fog of conflict. I could not make out his tender qualities. What has come between me and my father is more than time or distance. It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised. But he is still the father who raised her.