Dear Dad, I need to let you go

[Papa Coco]

Dad, I love you. I've always loved you. I've always pursued your love and tried to be whatever I believed you needed me to be so I could take care of you. I didn't know that I didn't need to take care of you. I mistakenly "knew" that I was responsible for your happiness. So, to honor what I thought was reality, I carried that burden of your happiness for more than 60 years.

Dad. I'm dying here under this burden. And today I realize...it's never been my burden to carry. That's what's wearing me out. I'm still living MY life surrounded by YOUR fears and YOUR drama.

You were the strongest man I've ever met. Not the brightest, but the strongest. And I worried incessantly about not hurting you. If that sounds crazy, it's because it IS crazy. How does a small boy come to believe that his big, strong Dad needs me to keep him strong? The only reason I felt that is because you put all your grief onto me. Somehow, I felt responsible for all your misery and all your mood swings. We were symbiotically tied together in a mess of entangled emotions and Teflon surfaces. When trouble came to you, it slipped on your Teflon surfaces onto me and I carried that misery for you. With you.

You had so many regrets. Today, Dad, I'm dying because of how I'm still carrying the colossal weight of your confusing mess of emotions and Teflon surfaces. You pushed your pain onto me. I was blamed for too much. Even now, as I write this, every time I approach the topic of me taking the blame for your misery, I feel a gigantic, and cluttered mass of swirling, poisonous energy swirling in my chest and arms. Filling MY body with YOUR fears and regrets.

I feel weak. SO WEAK. I'm so exhausted that I don't do anything for myself anymore. I just feel suffocating and overburdened. I search for ways to relax and hide from the burdens. I have no energy. I barely sleep. I'm living how you lived, but not because of my own burdens, but because of yours.

Like I'm dying on the battlefield. Dad, is that you? You lost so much in the war. YOu lost your arm. You were the only survivor of your entire division. THat has to be a heavy burden, but Dad...it was YOUR burden that I somehow took on for you.

Am I feeling your fear of dying on the battlefield? Dying from not being strong enough? Dying from not being allowed to be who I am? Mom gave me a lot of her fears too, but somehow when I write to her, I don't feel any pressure in my chest. But Dad, when I write to you, I feel a lifetime of fear and regret and remorse bubbling up like lava in my chest. My arms go weak. My knees hurt. Dad, I've carried too much of YOUR burden for far, far too long. If I don't give that back to you now, I'm not going to survive much longer. I can't even breathe when I sleep, so I have to use CPAP machines and all sorts of tricks just to sleep at night. I feel fear of things that aren't even a part of my life. I recognize now that I feel fear just for the sake of feeling fear. And I look JUST LIKE YOU when I'm feeling it. I realize now, that all those years of putting your regrets and fears onto me to carry them for you has become who I am. I'm a guy with a great life who feels like I have a horrible life, because I feel fear within me just for the sake of feeling your fear for you. I was your scape goat, but that has to stop.

You and I were tied together at the heart, and it wasn't good for either of us emotionally or spiritually. It was great, physically, because you taught me how to be self-reliant. YOu taught me how to build houses and cars and furniture, and how to take care of a family and earn a living and save for retirement. Physically I learned so much good from you. But emotionally and spiritually, you put a monkey wrench right in the middle of my own right to be who I was born to be. You made me into a mini-you. You taught me how to regret and sulk and fear, fear, fear. You taught me how to give my best and expect the worst in return. I get sick in my stomach just writing these words. I now know that you are the person I need the most professional help to let go of.
 
Dad, I am drowning in your fears. I don't believe that while you were alive, the dad character would have been able to process what I'm saying now. This letter would make no sense to you when you were alive. I don't believe you had the spiritual awareness to grasp what I'm saying now. But you are with God now and I hope, that as a spirit now, as a ghost, a soul from the other side, that you DO understand what I'm saying.

Your burdens were heavy, and I appreciate that. But I also know that your burdens were yours to deal with, and that putting them on me only damaged both of us. You didn't heal because you were able to blame me for your misery. Your Teflon coatings slid YOUR lessons onto ME and as a result, neither of us learned. I didn't heal from my own traumas because I wasn't focused on MY problems, while at the same time I wasn't authorized to learn your lessons for you. Dad, you had lessons to learn, just like I have them to learn. But I can't learn YOUR lessons. Just by trying, I'm furthering the agony and terror that you and I share.
 
Dad, I can respect your traumas but I can't live them for you. I think that I've proven, through 63 years of terror, that I've tried and tried and tried to live in your trauma, but in the end, it doesn't work that way.

People who pay others to do their homework for them get good grades but learn nothing. So it is with you and I, Dad. Your lessons were yours to learn. I can carry the weight for a while, but I can't learn about me while I'm doing your homework for you. Neither of us wins when I try. We both lost that battle in the end. Siblings 2 and 3 came in at the end to take your money, which they took by destroyed everything you and I had built during our long, complicated entanglement as father and son. I carried your burdens. I took all the blame for your traumas, and in the end, my siblings, who'd always treated you like you were an idiot, swooped in and took everything from me as spoils for themselves. This just proves to me that evil wins when good doesn't run its proper course. If I'd have learned my own lessons, and if you'd have taken responsibility for your own problems, you might have not had to end your life in the chaos and disgusting violence that your bad children were able to push onto you.

You didn't run your course. You put your terror onto me and I felt it for you. That was a mistake that hurt both of us. Neither of us learned our own lesson because we were tangled up in each other's lessons. And now, since I believe in Karma, I believe that you have to be reincarnated to live your own lessons all over again. You won't move forward until you learn today's lesson. Neither will I. And, Dad, I do NOT want to live this life over again. I'm exhausted. I've grown weak from carrying other people's burdens. I can't do this again.

I love you, but I'm breaking up with you. (lol). I'm not going to carry your burdens for you next time. I'm focused on my OWN PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP with God and with myself.

In the end, Dad. I still love you. Now that I see how much pain you lived in, I respect you more. However, I also see that our entangled lives were not healthy for either of us, so, as I said, I'm breaking free from you. I pray you will be able to move past this pain in your next life. And I pray that I am able to move forward, for the first time in my own long life, to live my own life. I may be too old to start over, but even if I get ONE day feeling free from your burdens, that will be "living the rest of my life on MY terms, not yours"

I love you Dad, but I need to heal without your burdens on my shoulders anymore. The weight of YOUR burdens has compromised my knees, lungs, heart, strength. I need to rebuild my own life. It's the only way you and I will both become free. If you'll carry your own burdens, you will finally find healing, and so will I.

[Bach]