To daddy-Monster:
You can resentfully blame me
because my existence – my birth –
reminds you of your new duty
resulting from my illegitimate conception.
Enraged, you can throw me
down a flight of stairs
before I can walk.
You can pound your fists into me
as I lie helplessly
in a three-year-old body.
You can explode repeatedly
throughout my childhood
terrifying me
and forcing me to grow up
without emotional security
or a viable foundation.
You can beat my mother
and my grandmother
and my brother
in utero
who half a century later
chooses to end his life
because –
who can say?
You can embitter my mother
so that she hates all men –
including me.
You can set me up
to be bullied by classmates
who ruthlessly torment me
every school day.
You can kill my pet gerbil
in a fit of rage
and demand that I quietly
accept that loss.
You can lie to me.
You can cheat at chess.
You can try to suffocate me.
You can explode all over me
because of minor mistakes.
You can call me
many unprintable names.
You can insult me
and put me down
and continually find fault.
You can create
a hostile environment for me –
so that I’m unprepared
for adult life.
You can leave me your legacy –
two decades of domestic violence –
two decades under continual threat and terror.
You can set me up
for religious abuse
from toxic theologians
who deceive me
with their simplistic answers
and judgmental solutions
to everything.
You can set me up
to be taken advantage of
by pious roommates.
You can shatter my confidence
and set me up
for career underemployment –
struggle with people skills
and workplace bullies.
You can give me flashbacks –
living nightmares –
post-traumatic stress.
You can injure my heart.
You can dump
your rage and shame and guilt
upon my soul –
and destroy your own heart
in the process.
Still, I will rise.
I have one thing you lack:
courage.
Courage to fight for Truth.
Courage to fight for Peace.
Courage to step forward
day after day after day.
Courage to stand up to bullies.
Courage – and humility –
to seek needed help.
I will
slowly
climb
slowly
out of the bottomless pit
you have dug for me.
I embrace the upward spiral.
I will ascend with the mountain goats
and other climbing creatures,
far above your withered soul.
I love you; I hate you;
I sometimes forgive you.
You are my biological father,
my biological Monster.
You were never my dad.
– Healing Heart Warrior (Tom M.)