On Father's Day 2016 via Tolson 4 TEARS*

*Tolson 4 TEARS: Telling Everyone About Rape & Suicide, so no shed tear is wasted

Caution: This is not a warm-fuzzy post regarding Father's Day!
After being subjected to the vast violence of the sociopathic thug and felonious criminal who was my father, he ended his life when I was 19. I deluded myself into thinking his suicide ended the damage he had done. The reality is that he left behind unfinished business and emotional debris. It would take forever for me to find the scattered shards of my heart, broken long before his death, when he abused then abandoned me, exploited then rejected me.
I wondered, as I often did, exactly why my father committed suicide. Did he kill himself as atonement for abuse? There is no reprieve for perpetrating the unpardonable upon children. The ripple effect of his insanity formed emotional tidal waves that flooded out my will. I am still riding the crest of the wave. Even when I try, I can think of no positive characteristics or redeeming qualities regarding my father.

Whether I loved or hated him, or both, was an abstract piece of heart subject to interpretation. It depended on how I looked at it. My instinct was to love him and expect him to love me in return. That was natural. Perhaps if he had loved me it would have been easier to love him. But he did not nurture love. Instead, he provoked hatred. Love was defeated by fear until I hated him with a passion.
On this Father’s Day 2016, years after his death, decades after writing this card to my daddy, I grieve for the loving father-daughter relationship we never had.
It saddens me beyond my tears that love was lost within the fears.

Excerpts from Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story by Lynn C. Tolson