by Susan Morton

Created on: November 22, 2008

I spent sixteen years of my life planning revenge against my own father. He was highly abusive, I think we could have lived with that,but he was a child molester too. When I was small if he was beating my mother, as tiny as I was I would jump on my fathers back to try and get him off over her and I was only four years old. He would shrug me off like I was a fly, and I hated him for hurting my mother. It wasn't till later that I figured out that my life was going to be hell warmed over, if I did not do something soon.

This is something that is going to make me look really bad, but I used to obsess about the death of my father. If he would just not come home one day leaving us destitute and I would have been a happy camper. Then he started coming into my room at night, I definitely was not the passive child like my other siblings. I kicked, punched and bit anything he came near me with. I eventually got beat down, but at least I had the dignity of not being another door mat. I would rather take the beating, I could live with that, but I could not live with him touching me, never again.

The last time he tried to come into my room drunk as a lord, I had a steel hat pin one side of my mattress and a hawk billed knife on the other side. Which ever I could get to first I used, and as usual I got the beating. Sometimes I fought as much as I could to make him so angry that he would lose the want to molest me. Then he raped me, and the fight was on. I have to say that I have in the future turned my father in to The Department of Social Services, which may not have helped me keep my family, but at least I was free.

One day I had enough of it all. I knew that if I did not leave I would become as crazy as the rest of the family. My mother knew what was going on in our house, and I fully expected her to tell my father I was leaving and what I was going to do. Believe it or not for once she kept her mouth shut. I told her that I had became obsessed with killing my father, my mother reminded me of the electric chair, or death row for the rest of my life. So, I made the decision to simply walk away. What was becoming a serious obsession had been tossed aside for an option to be free, even if it meant losing my family. Later when I had come home after about twenty five years, I learned that he had committed suicide. It was not the first time he had done this, usually he tried to talk mother into going with him, or my sister.

Thank the creator that no one went with him. I hear that he would get drunk with my brother and ask the question would sue every come home? I think they said they counted me as dead, being the traitor that I was. There was no way I would have my children around him. So coming home earlier was not an option. I gave up going home, so that my children would never have to know my father being the evil and violent man he was. That has never been a regret of mine. So I end this story with this moral, Maybe revenge is not for us to take, to step out of the circle of violence is to step out of the obsession of revenge, which is a bitter pill to swallow, and usually leaves you very much alone, sometimes in a prison cell. I took the higher road so that my children would at least have a mother who loved them enough to shield them from what I went through. I do not recommend revenge for anyone, remember it is like a mirror the more you manipulate people, the more it comes back to you. I say forgive, let go, and let god bless.

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