Building Bridges?

He said he wanted to appologize. When he said it I stopped, this man, my father, had killed my mother, blown her to pieces with a shotgun with me and my sister not 5 yards away. For 28 years he had maintained it wasn't his fault, he had shoved blame everywhere, on her, on her boyfriend, on her parents, even on my sister and I. Through my life my sister and I were hammered constantly to pity him, not to think badly of him, to forgive him by his family, who had snatched us up and hidden us and pulled the resources and brain washed us to assure my mothers family lost not only their daughter, but her two children as well. Only when I moved away from home and suffered and struggled and had my life dissolve around me time and again did I start to wonder why the way I was, the way I had been raised to be, was so wrong. Overweight, suffering from cronic major depression, health problems including a painful spine disease and a brain tumor, I'm not the poster child for "Joy in Life".

     What I do have though is faith, in God, in the world, in myself and my ability to survive. I may not be successful, I may not be pretty, married with 2 children and a nice house and an SUV, but I am a survivor, when tough times come, I know how to get through them, I may not be able to articulate the knowledge, even to myself, but inside me is the strength and I have faith in it, I have survived too much to ignore it. I am intelligent, gifted with an ability to relate what I see and feel to others, in short, I can write. The ability to relate what happens, what I see and feel is a release, a vent, and I'm grateful I have it. I've forgotten it, ignored it, neglected it, but I always return to it, especially now that it involves a keyboard instead of an endless search for a pen that writes comfortably and enough paper to contain what I have to express.