The first time I thought about killing my father was probably when I was about four. At the time, my mother, brother and I all slept together downstairs; not in beds, but scattered throughout the living room. My brother, who is eight years older than me, slept at the far end of the room in the big couch from which you could see the dark foyer and the hallway in front of the stairs that led into the kitchen, and perhaps a little of the pitch black that lead up to the second floor. I occupied a love-seat that blocked a set of french doors that I never saw opened, and at my feet, in the corner where the living-room met the sun-room, was a big black recliner that my mother slept in.
I don't have many memories of my childhood, mostly because for many years I saw everything through a thick haze. Today its as if the entire period is this foggy memory that I have, but can't recall well enough to know that it wasn't just a dream. What I do remember is lying awake in the wafting darkness as I imagined leaning over my father's sleeping body and lodging a ball-peen hammer in his skull. I had these thoughts every night, and I could not even begin to recall the endless hours spent awake thinking of ways to get away with brutal and savage murder without being caught. I suppose that at the time I didn't consider my status as a minor, as a child no less, to be an element I could have employed to my advantage, but if I had, I am sure I would have made it farther into the process than fantasizing.
Amity Bitzel said even on a good day, it felt like living in a child's version of war, just waiting to see if the bombs would start falling and wishing you had shelter. I often felt exactly that way, and when I heard her story on Ira Glass's This American Life, I felt bad for identifying with her; because my father never beat me. I recall being spanked, and he would ask me if I wanted now, or later. I always said later, desperately hoping he would forget; he never did. But beyond that, my father never hit me. He didn't have to. I have always felt guilty for identifying with people like Amity, who suffered real physical abuse, because in comparison, I had it good.
I can recall once when I was sobbing and distraught; he hugged me and I tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let me. It was very cliche. He held me as I cried, and the whole time I felt an anger, a furious resentment building in my core and it only made me cry harder. I tried many times to think of my father as the enemy, as evil and cruel, someone with harmful intentions. The truth, though, was that no one was important enough to him to justify the thought. His blatant indifference was just as painful and frightening and hurtful as his beatings would have been, had we gotten any. My father didn't hit me, but he did take a bite out of my heart, my brain, and my soul. To this day I feel the emptiness that he created.
Amity went on to share an e-mail her father had sent explaining his management of childhood trauma in an attempt to appeal to her sympathy. He talked about his abusive father, and that he eventually learned to love him, to forget the bitterness. I have hated my father for years and I consider myself weak for feeling bad when I say that there's no one in the world I hate more than myself except my dad. Which I say a lot. Amity's father included this in his message: "I regret and feel guilty all the time for being a bad father." My father has never admitted being unkind and denies being abusive. My father has never apologized because he has never changed; because he thinks nothing is wrong.
Now I am 18 and when a romantic man suggests taking me away from everything else, I leap. I crave and yearn and will spend my life in desperation of escape. But I can't get away. He has planted himself within me, and thus I walk around, full of his emptiness, aching.
