Today has been a day filled with thought.

Mostly, I thought about my father. A few days ago I sent him an email, randomly, and he actually emailed me back. I haven’t talked to him (before then) in months. My father and I have a very strained relationship. It used to be different. We used to be so close I never thought I’d find a man I could be closer to. It was happy and fulfilling. At least, at the time I thought so. Now that I look back on it I realize it was very twisted and sick.

Yes, yes, daddy touched me. Blah blah blah. It’s the same story that’s been told a hundred times before me, and sadly will be told a hundred times after.

Although my story has a bit of a twist. I’m not sure how willing I am to go into it on a public (granted, anonymous) journal.

What got me thinking was the fact that we went back to “normal”. I never got the chance to confront him, never let him know how much he truly damaged me.

After eight years, I am just now to the point in my life where I am comfortable with being alone with a man. No more irrational fear. No more asking myself if this stranger will hurt me. No more flinching if someone touches me. I had a friend who used to think I was scared all the time because he would come up behind me and lightly touch my shoulder and it would take everything I had not to bolt for the door. For a teenage girl, that’s pretty embarrassing.

The biggest thing that I resent him for is the fact that I cannot enjoy normal sex. I was so used to going away in my head when he was touching me that now I subconsciously associate anyone touching me with him. And I have tried to be in the moment, so think about what my lover is doing to me, how my body is reacting, but my nerve endings are much smarter than I give them credit for. I read somewhere once about nerve memory, and I think mine remember the abuse and just shut down when someone touches me in a sexual way. And that is truly frustrating. I just want to enjoy sex. Even just once. Just to feel normal for a little while.

Looking back, I can’t say that it’s just truly frustrating. It makes me want to punch and kick and claw at him so maybe he can feel even a little bit of what I feel inside.

It’s hard for me to verbalize how I feel about him most of the time. Usually when I think about it all I hear in me screaming at the top of my lungs inside of my head. In fact, that’s what I hear right now. Screaming, over and over and over.

I told him once that if I ever had a daughter and he touched her, I would kill him. I have never meant anything so much in my whole life. I would do it in a second and never have a regret about it.

Honestly, I don’t think I would resent him so much if he hadn’t turned his back on me when my mother found out. Instead, he chose to tell her that I was delusional and I threw myself on him, wearing low cut shirts and flirting with him whenever no one else was around. He told her that I had been trying to seduce him.

Nothing in the world will shatter you more than the person you trust more than anything completely screwing you over. It took me several years to repair myself after those words were uttered. In some ways (okay, a lot of ways if I’m being completely honest) I’m still broken. Maybe irreparable.

I’ve tried, in the years since then, to have some sort of relationship with him. Why? I have no idea. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. Maybe because I knew that at one point we had a wonderful relationship, minus the abuse. At this point more than anything, I feel that he owes me. He owes me for not ruining his life. I still haven’t seen him since this whole thing came to light (he lives about 2500 miles away from me), but we talk on the phone occasionally, and the one email. That’s about it. Maybe I want to stay in his life to remind him what he did. To make him feel guilty. And I know he does, I can hear it in his voice when we talk; when I don’t share like I used to, it hurts him. And it makes some sick part of me happy.

I know, go to therapy, right? Been there, done that. Didn’t help in the least.
At least writing about it helps.