Ask Lemmy

The short version is that my father was both a victim and perpetrator of the cycle of abuse. When I was a kid, he was an angry man who would often explode in a violent rage. I ran away from home when I graduated from high school because I hated him and didn't want to be around him anymore.

Eventually I learned that he wasn't a bad person at his core. He genuinely wanted to do the right thing. He never had much of a chance. His own father destroyed him. Some of the stories he told me about his dad, when I was a kid, are horrible and sad. I think realizing that he was just a very broken man made it easier to forgive him.

We've talked about it a lot over the years. He is genuinely sorry for the way he treated me and my siblings and has lots of regrets. He's not perfect but he is a good "Papa" to my kids and we get along pretty well nowadays.

I am more like my dad than my 19 year old self probably thought I would ever be. But I managed to mostly hang on to the good parts and get rid of the bad ones. My kids will never learn to fear me the way I feared my dad.

P.S. The time I called him a dick to his face.

I was in my mid 20's. I called him on the phone to confront him about something he had done. All of a sudden, he blurts out, "why don't any of my kids want anything to do with me?" At this point, I was very angry with him and didn't care what his response was. I said, "Dad, we want to have a relationship with you but you make it really hard when you're being a dick all the time."

When I was a kid I would have paid dearly for saying something like that to him. The beating would have been fierce and merciless. When I said that he kind of just stopped and I could tell he was considering what I had said. I don't know why but I think he actually took it to heart.