So, I had a similar childhood it seems. My dad hit me, and emotionally abused me and my mom. I remember sitting at the dinner table, hungry but patient, knowing and dreading he would be home soon. I remember being knocked from the entry to the basement to the front door, via a series of two-fisted strikes to my chest. I got back up each time I got knocked down, until I was backed against a solid surface, and the strikes continued.
But he wasn't that way with my three younger siblings, or when in public. And, on my brother's seventh birthday, he was murdered. Not by a stranger, but by someone close to him.
My anger turned to someone else, now. Though we had not gotten along, and I didn't like him, I still loved him. That's the thing with children. They're actually very hard to push away entirely. I hated Rex, with everything I had. I hated him for ruining the lives of my younger siblings, for making the finances hard on my mom. In the end, his death and the insurance/lawsuit that followed pulled our house out of foreclosure and paid for my sibling's college.
Anyways, back to the "present" timeline for my story... Two years later, actually. We're in court. He's on trial. My Papa, my dad's dad, and I are talking in a little private room during a recess. My mom and grandma are here, as well as other family members. He says that he'd like to beat Rex, and goes into some detail, before asking what I'd do. I told him I'd break all of his bones, starting in his fingers and toes and working towards the middle. No one batted an eye. I was seventeen.
At the time, I had no empathy for his wife and two adopted children as they sat in this courtroom and watched the man whom they'd known intimately for years attain two life sentences for murder. I wanted nothing more than pain for them equal to our own. There was a stain on my child brother's BIRTHDAY. I wanted revenge, not justice.
About a year after this, I woke from a dream that my dad had faked his death and come back into our lives. It was vivd, and I had a hard time reconciling whether it was reality or not. I was torn, not wanting him back for my sake, but wanting him back to raise my fatherless siblings. I am the oldest by far, but could not be a father to them.
What I've come to realize in the years since is that Rex has, is, and will continue to pay for what he did. His fate is the more miserable of the two. His family's fate is far more miserable than our own. I wish them well, because Rex destroyed them with much more efficiency than he destroyed us. I wish Rex well, as his failed suicide attempt left him with 2/3 of his brain in prison with younger and stronger men with a history of aggression. I hope he can overcome himself and find peace.
I forgive him not for myself, but because it is irrelevant to myself. This is the philosophy I have formed... The universe isn't for or against anyone. It is indifferent. There is nothing greater than myself that gives a damn about my tiny goings on. I am less than an ant compared to this planet, which is less than a speck of dust in space. And I am equally unimportant as that statement makes me seem. And thus, so is he. It's silly to attach one's self to such insignificance. That is what causes grudges and anger, in my opinion - the misguided idea that one's self is important.
You may ask, then, if nothing matters, what do you live for? I live for the butterfly affect. I live to influence as many as I can as positively as I can, so that the echoes of my words and actions may reverberate positively through time.
