I've only recently been able to get my stepmother in perspective and I'm 56 and she died in 2001. I think the enormity of the other person's effect on our lives takes a long time to adjust to and lots of experience with the "wider" world out here so we can see that one person, even at that time, wasn't all there was but only all we could see. I think "forgiveness" is an ongoing thing as we experience more and see more and get it all in perspective. My therapist was a bit helpful when she kept bringing up that a person isn't all "one" thing/way. The way we perceive the person isn't the way everyone else sees them and the things we remember aren't all that happened between us, just the "larger" or "special" (in a bad way) highlights. I'm amazed at how little things keep bubbling to the surface now, things I saw and experienced that weren't hurtful in my stepmother's and my interaction and how I "understand" some of the things she did and how/why she did them the way she did and the distance helps as does the "quiet" of her death, the lack of her presence to "distract" me and sway me one way or the other.

Why did you start communicating with your father again? That might help you a little with the forgiveness? There might be some spark of "good" to counter the bad thoughts/memories? Whenever I get overwhelmed, I remember a first grade classroom and how when you're 6, the chairs and desks, etc. are the "right" size but when you come back as an adult, they're tiny and we don't fit them anymore. People and their affect on us can be like that too. And the smaller the "problem" the less there is to forgive and the easier it is because it's less "noticeable" against the totality of our lives. Really look at your father now; I remember when I was approximately your age and asked my father to fix a problem I had and he was clueless. I'd always felt he had been able to help me with everything before and now he didn't even know how to approach it. He was getting old. I was becoming "stronger" than he, a larger force in my world.