http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_us_investigation;_ylt=AhsQnpPKMOZrJYcBo2crIpxX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUlThe link is to a story about the US soldiers who killed a 25 year old Iraqi woman's family and then raped and killed the woman. This story is haunting me right now, and I'm having a really hard time with it. It probably has to do with something that my father said in his "apology" letter to me. On that note, I've decided to share that letter here. This is what he wrote to me after being in therapy (like I told him he needed to do). The more I read it, the less sincere it seems. Also, not to shift blame, but I wonder what, if any, influence the army had on him, and that shaped him into the monster that he is today.
"I sit down to write this letter as both an apology and product of my own recovery process for the abuse I have perpetrated on you as a child. First and foremost I wish to express my sorrow for having done such a thing to you. I know what an awful thing I have done and I am truly sorry for having committed this act upon you. I can not change what has happened nor can I even begin to feel as you must about this perpetration. If there were any way that I could change the past I certainly would. I make no excuses for what I have done. I can only offer my remorse and any assistance that I might be able to help you in your own recovery process.
You are the primary victim of this abuse. As secondary victims, your mother and our marriage have also suffered this terrible thing that I have done. I accept sole responsibility for what I have done. Nothing you have ever done is the cause for what has happened to you. I made all the decisions and manipulated you to conform to my demands. I used my position and authority as your father to perpetrate the abuse. You happened to be the victim by my choosing because of time and circumstance. I made the decision, albeit the wrong decision, to do what I did.
I make no excuse, but my therapy has enlightened me to how I came to make these terrible decisions. Historically, my own growing up and life experiences were to wind up leaving me with the wrong impressions of what should and should not be good a chose of proper behavior between father and daughter.
I have learned that from very early in my life I had not the best of examples to learn and choose from. When I was very young I spent much time in a hospital that left me with feelings of rejection and abandonment. That period and the subsequent death of my mother did not give me the opportunity to appreciate what a normal loving parent and child relationship was all about. I did not learn much about hugging and holding as parents should. I had a hollow within that even grandpa could not fill. He was consumed with his own grief and need to provide for (name deleted) and myself. He just wasn't there enough.
Later in life I would experience more rejection and your mother and I had our problems, before your birth even, that we could not resolve. Even today, my problems with your mother stem from my not understanding how to give the love that she deserves. Although I am learning more as time goes on. Again, I would go through a cycle of rejection and abandonment with my first wife. And I would learn some bad habits through that marriage and my military experiences.
Throughout life I have always tried to deal with my emotional problems internally and never even considered that I needed outside help. After all, I was a man and men didn't go to others for help. They solved their own problems. As life pressures began to build with my illness forcing me to leave the army and a whole new set of troubles beginning, I was to become a bomb looking for a place to explode. Added financial difficulties from retirement, not being able to find work, going back to school, trying to provide for my family, and mom's going back to work to help support us was too crushing a blow to my ego and sense of power. I lost control and tried to regain it back as my mind could only understand at that time.
Damage to my ego renewed a sense of anger and frustration that I had experienced earlier in life. Loss of control was a loss of power. My sense of power and how it improved my ego is how I had survived past troubles. My military career had taught me how to use these things to climb the ladder and succeed. But some of my career also trained me to improperly equate power with sex. It was never the intention of the army to do that to men, but as youngsters playing at being grown emotionally mature men at war or in far off places, the army had no clue as to what was being done to its men. I had learned to exercise the act of sex with younger woman in foreign lands as a tool of power and ego inflation. You became the object of my retaliation upon my anger and frustration over a world that, I saw, I had lost total control.
Even as my abuse of you progressed I understood the wrong of it. All of my life experiences were not so degraded as to not make me realize what was right and what wrong. I knew what should be. I just didn't have the courage to face reality and I created a fantasy world of what I felt was right. That fight within me added to the problem as I perpetrated the abuse on again and off again. I couldn't win that battle on my own until another outlet of relief was obtained. So I began to run from my problems by doing all the travel I could.
I now an in the process of recovery. The first step was to publicly admit the perpetration of you to your mother and to a therapist. I understood that things could turn out very badly, and can still, but I felt that I needed to accept responsibility and help your recovery in any way I could. The recovery process with the therapist has led me to much self-introspection and awareness. I am beginning to understand the issues that I must face and deal with. And I am better understanding the issues of your mother's as well as learning the differences between men and women in general. Recovery is a slow and long process that I may never get completely done. But the start is the biggest step to take, and I have done so. It is a continuing awareness of what goes on within me and those closest to me.
I am committed to assisting you in what ever way I can toward your own recovery. You once said to me that you would need to see a psychiatrist for the rest of your life because of what I was doing to you. I would hope that I did not do that much damage to you, but I am prepared to commit whatever physical and emotional support is required to help you overcome the damage I have inflicted upon you.
Again, I am sorry for what I have done to you and for taking your childhood away. I can never repay the damage I have done nor give back what was taken. The responsibility is my own for what I have done, no one else. Not you, not anyone, me. I have begun a recovery process of my own that will be continuous. And I remain deeply committed to help you with yours."
Too bad it took my confronting him to get him to this point. And too bad I know that it isn't sincere. I especially love the part where he says he'll be working on his recovery for the rest of his life but he hopes he hasn't hurt me so much that I'll be doing the same.
For what it's worth, he saw his therapist for 3 years, and he now considers himself "cured".
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