Most people call me by my given name, it’s Rachel. Some people only know me by my pen name, which is RJ Palmer. Sometimes, I feel as though these two aspects of my identity, the woman and the writer, are completely separated from one another however inextricably intertwined as they may be. One thing is certain; they are both me as thoroughly and completely as they are separated from one another as different aspects of me. I know this all may sound slightly contradictory but it all does have a point when taken in the context of both my writing and what it is I write about right now even if most don’t understand my reasoning.
You see, I was a victim of child abuse. I say “was” because I now call myself an over comer as opposed to a victim. I am not a victim anymore because I grew up and forgave all the suffering which gives me leave to say that I rose above the past and made it something from which I can learn as opposed to something on which I dwell. It does not shape how I live but it does shape how I view the world and this is important because I beat the statistics. Most adults who went through what I did as a child by my age now are dead by accident or design and statistically, I should’ve been dead by age 25. I’ll be 32 this year which brings me to my point, if you’ll be so kind as to bear with me a moment.
In February on Valentine’s Day, my natural father will celebrate his birthday which isn’t necessarily to say there will be a celebration, one must first have friends and family around for a celebration and he will have neither. Do I empathize? No. Do I feel sympathy? Definitively not. Do I pity him? Yes, and here’s why. He made his choices and threw away and drove away everyone he ever said he loved and now, he’s not only stark raving mad in the most literal sense of the phrase, he’s also horribly isolated and lonely. I can pity him for that which realistically would be a greater insult to him than my empathy or sympathy. My apologies, Richard Palmer, but you made yourself who and what you are and I can’t help but think you want it that way. You hate yourself so much that you can’t possibly fathom why anyone else would ever be able to love you so you naturally assume that everyone else is lying and summarily push them away before you can be hurt by their rejection. It’s an unnecessary preemptive strike and an undeniably horrid way to live.
I tend not to think about him most of the time though sometimes this is impossible given that his birthday comes once a year just like everyone else’s. No one will call him or send him a card, make him a cake or throw a party for him and his birthday will pass just like any other birthday or day for everyone else and this is not the end of the world but for the first time in more than a decade and a half, I’m going to choose a different path. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before and I know you won’t ever read this because you likely don’t even have a computer much less get online but that’s not what I’m trying to get at right now.
Right now, I choose to give a shout out to my father, Richard Palmer. He’s the most insane, cantankerous, racist, chauvinistic, cold hearted misogynist I’ve ever laid eyes on. He hates women, homosexuals, lesbians (more so because they are female and therefore an abomination to God) and minorities but he’ll still like a minority male over a female of any nationality simply for the ideal of gender. He hated and mistrusted me because I had the audacity to be born female and looked like my mother, but that’s a very long and involved story best told over many beers. He hurt and beat my brothers and I without real qualm or artifice, beat and stalked women at his whim and did and said unspeakable things to his children simply because his interpretation of scripture gave him the right and no one could ever tell him any different. And yet, I have to thank him in my own way. However much he set the worst example with which any child has ever been cursed, however begrudgingly and no matter how much he didn’t want to and regardless of how much my brothers and I suffered at his hands and watched women suffer at his hands, he still kept a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs and clothes on our backs, and that’s not nothing. He taught my brothers and I how to hate ourselves and everyone else, treated us as no better than the dirt beneath his feet, ground any idea of self-esteem from all of us, played with us as toys and objects and did so without regard, but he still kept us alive and that deserves a certain kind of twisted respect.
So here it is Richard, the one time I will ever do this. You won’t see this and you wouldn’t care even if you did but you are my natural father whether you want it to be so or not. You hate me and all that I feel for you is pity, but I choose to set that aside for now as both your daughter and an adult and tell you Happy Birthday.
I’ll never do this again because it’s taken more strength than I thought it would. You carry your possessions and your world around with you for fear. You’ve closed yourself off from the world and consequently, all the love you could’ve gotten and that was your choice. You would rather believe the world is out to get you than take the chance and love. You’ve refused to forgive the past and you carry those chains as well and they weigh you down abysmally. I know you refuse to believe you’ve ever done anything wrong and would sooner blame someone else for the consequences of your actions and choices. You hate with casual and stubborn insistence because it’s easier than caring about anything. Your only semi-human connection is a little doll you call your daughter and I wonder here and there, does she have a name? You’ve said you’re proud of her, so you must have given her a name and identity. She can’t give or receive love but I suppose for someone as deeply and hopelessly lonely as you are as well as petrified by the idea of getting hurt, it’s preferable to have that companionship than it is to love a live human for who they are.
You are absolutely demented and you are my father and nothing will ever change either of those things. You are also going to grow old and die alone and that’s pitiful. You’re locked inside your own private hell and no one will ever be able to reach through the lies and delusions and make you see what you’ve become and make you face what you’ve done. That alone makes you a coward in my mind because to refuse to face your faults is to refuse to face yourself and since you’ve spent so much time refusing to face yourself, you’ve robbed yourself of the ability to interact with anyone or find something akin to the willingness to love yourself. You’re in a black hole of your own making and your freedom will only, finally come with the surcease of death but I still wish you all the happiness you’re capable of feeling or letting yourself feel on your birthday. I wish you just one genuine smile and a moment of truth that isn’t clouded by your own delusions, fear and suspicions. I can’t wish for you love because you don’t want that, I can’t wish for you a moment of joy because that scares you and I can’t wish for you any happiness or friends because you wouldn’t have any of it. But I can wish for you just one Happy Birthday and that’s exactly what I’m doing now. That’s all. Just one. Happy Birthday, Dad.
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