Not My Father's Son

by Alan Cumming

But we were now ready, I hoped. I picked up the papers from the bedside table and read over what I had written. It seemed so weird to see the entire thing encapsulated so neatly. Only two pages of A4, but packed with portent: Dad The way you behaved towards us throughout our childhood has had a huge effect on us, and has caused us many problems. You brutalized and terrorized us. We were made to feel useless, unworthy; we lived in constant fear of you. Not just of being hit but also of being constantly shouted at and brought down and tormented. We were never good enough for you. We could never live up to your expectations. We were made to feel we were not capable of doing anything. You would ask us to do tasks for you that we couldn’t possibly achieve, and then you would chastise us and hit us for not doing them well enough. So consequently we’ve gone through life feeling unhappy and unable to acknowledge our achievements because we still feel unworthy—as being told we are useless is so ingrained in us. We have made excuses for your behavior all our lives. We were embarrassed because people laughed and didn’t believe us if we told them about the violence, about you stopping us from going to things at the last minute, the way you made us work all the time, and so we started to make up excuses for you, so much so that we all pretended that nothing was really wrong and none of this ever happened, until it exploded out earlier this summer. But we also felt it was our fault. We ...