i hate fathers. i hate everything about them, i have never known anything good about a father. so it is so hard to be one, such as I am. i mean, how can i be good at being something i hate. my son never called me 'dad', he called me benny. he lives with another family now, which makes me happy a bit, because i know he is being loved the way he should be.

I want to know what a real dad would be like. I have decided that i never really had a dad, i mean obviously i had a guy who was my father. but not a dad. i just wanted to do good by my son, and sometimes it was so hard to put him ahead of my stuff, when all this shit seems so all-emcompassing. but i tried. i guess.

i guess what it comes down to is that i so struggle with the idea of love. i mean, sometimes i feel like i am not a person, because people know how to love. i want to love my kids, but when i say 'i love you' i feel like some sort of pervert. i dont really understand how to love them right. i want my kids to feel loved, and wanted and needed and all that, but how do you do it? i know how I felt when i was a kid, and sex was what made me feel that way. so how do i make my kids feel those things in a way that is good and something a real dad would do and in a way that will make them grow up right? I dont know.

and isnt that scary?

Sometimes i feel like my heart is breaking. i get so down on myself, and tell myself how shitty i am. its like i can hear my dad in my head, and i am telling myself the same things he told me. but thats how i feel. sometimes i just feel like nothing. and i still feel so weak and powerless, like man, i got out, i was in foster care, i could have told ANYONE and i was safe, but i didn't and i went back to them. and it makes me feel guilty and responsible for what happened to me when i hear about other people getting out or telling someone or whatever, i feel like, well i deserved what i got because i wasnt as strong as them.

sometimes i dont even know what im talking about. ok, most of the time.

it pisses me off that i have to do this kinda thing to get better. it should be him having to deal with this, its not right that people can just screw a kid up so bad and then just take off and leave them to pick up whatever pieces they decided to leave behind. its not right.

Hi Bey,

I just read a few of your posts and I don't blame you for feeling this way. You have every right to be pissed off at the world. Unfortunately, no one is going to come along and save us now that we are adults. It's not fair but it all up to us now.

Please keep going to therapy and keep talking! The fact that you are happy that your son is being taken care of and loved by another family tells me that you do have it in you to do it yourself someday. Take care of yourself and when your son is old enough to understand some things it wouldn't surprise me if he called you "Dad" some day. It will be well worth the effort!

Brian

You nailed this on the head. I was having a discussion about this very thing with my Disability Resource Officer at the college I attend.

It is very exhausting dealing with this shit and being and an adult.

Charlie.

Hi Bey,

I have struggled with the idea of love, too, and I guess probably a lot of us and a lot of "non abused" people have, too.

For me part of the problem is that saying or meaning "I love you" means needing in some way something from someone else. And it's hard for me to accept that I can have these connections to other people and have them be OK.

But then I remember that mostly in the world people have these needs for each other and they really are OK.

It's OK to have complicated needs and loves and to be complicated.

One of the hardest things I'm having to face recently is that I'm simply not perfect, and that I hold myself to a standard of loving behavior that is simply impossible for any human being to accomplish. I feel like I should be able to live without ever in any possible way hurting anyone else. To me this is like the fear you shared that "when i say 'i love you' i feel like some sort of pervert."

That fear of my love being hurtful has closed me down. And yet, when I look at my life and at life in general, people hurt each other all the time in ways that really are OK. What I mean is that people have romances and break up and have friendships that fail, they have angry blow-ups and say the wrong things and all of that is part of what it means to be human and relate to other people. None of that is perverted in any way even thought it certainly is hurtful.

What I know and have to really accept is that I would never abuse anyone, even though I might inadvertently hurt someone by my careless words or my inability to express perfectly what is in my heart.

I think developing a fear of loving is one of the real harms done to us by being abused.

I hope this helps you as much as much as it helped me to say it. Thanks for your post.

Danny