The Good Times

Now that I have found some clarity on why I am writing, and why I am going no contact, I have found my thinking shifting. I can start to appreciate the good times really just as good times, rather than trying to push everything through the filter of narcissism and evil.

I say “I can,” because there was a very real necessity before. I could not see the good times. I could not think about them. I could not be reminded of them. Really, I could not. The good times were the worst. They would trigger me, and cause me to have disturbing thoughts, obsessive dreams, extreme fatigue, sleeping bouts, dizziness. I couldn’t handle them.

But now I can.

Today, I was out kayaking with some of my kids. I entrusted my nine year old to kayak with my eighteen month old. The wind started to blow him out, and I got concerned, so I coached him to paddle harder, and came up behind him and pushed him with my kayak. “This is like my dad,” I thought, “He would get concerned, and help me out too when in wilderness situations.” Sometimes, he would become needlessly tense, vocal, yell, or make me feel bad. But not all the time. Sometimes he was just a dad concerned for his boy. Just like I was just then. He was not all bad. And even really bad people have good moments. 

“You, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.” 

This moment did not trigger me just now. Why?

Because it is not shaking my decision to go no contact. I know now why I am going no contact: why I am continuing to go no contact, that is. It is because these people are unsafe. Right now, in the present. For clear and definable reasons:

1. They are a threat to the emotional health and development of my children 
2. They have threatened legal actin
3. I have reason to fear verbal, emotional, spiritual, and perhaps physical abuse

These are good reasons to stay no contact.

But they do not negate the good times that we had. And the good times do not negate the no contact: the two are separate.

There is a certain beauty to this. A dignity.

In the past, my birth father did try. At times, he tried very hard. He is made in the image of God too, after all. At times, some real goodness shone through. Those were good times.

In the recent past, when I was tormented by thoughts of going back on no contact, and being forced into a painful relationship and confrontation with my birth father, I felt the need to force all of my memories to be bad. I realize now — and I am trying to restrain the sense of embarrassment that I feel — that some of my posts were somewhat artificial in this sense. But I will not be embarrassed, because this is a profoundly honest and realistic journey. No doubt, many others struggle with this exact reality.

I sought to make all of my memories negative because the good memories were very hard to handle, as it seemed to negate all of the abusive memories, and also the abuse in the recent past. They seemed to disprove the case that this is an abusive and a dangerous person. Some of the ways that I sought to force my good memories to be negative were:

1. Reminding myself that the good times were only good because my birth father was getting something out of them (which is true, but not necessarily a bad thing…it’s OK to enjoy time with your kids)
2. Reminding myself that even in the good times, they were only good so long as we didn’t get my birth father angry, which could happen very easily (this was true, but at times he did restrain himself, and some trips passed with no incident. I can still thank God for these times, and cherish them)
3. Reminding myself that even in the good times, there was the threat that birth father would discipline us severely if we disagreed with him (this is true, but it was less problematic when I was a child. As a child, obedience was more normal. The more traumatic memories are when I was a teen, and should have been developing independent thought, and was instead quite literally “beaten into submission.” But having a strict home as a child actually made for some happy times. At least I knew where the boundaries were: and it did feel like a form of sincere love at times, when done correctly)

Like all people, my birth father is a complicated man. There is good, there is bad. There is past, there is present. I suppose there is also future. 

Right now, I feel as thought I am developing a relationship with two distinct people: my actual father, who I believe to be dangerous, and my father whom I imagine in Heaven. Perfected. The best parts of him amalgamated into a wholeness, the sin and pain healed. A wonderful person. My wife saw this person in a vivid mental picture at church. I saw this same mental picture later on while listening to Christmas carols. 

There was good, there was bad. 

I can take the good with the bad. I can honour the good, while I mourn and protect the bad.

I can do this now, 

…since I am for sure going no contact.

(Also pressure/fear, no contact from my children)