When my dad commit suicide, and he was my abuser I was pretty confused. I hadn't been in direct contact with him for a few years but my sister was, so I would get updates. I did not go to the funeral either. To complicate it my dad had bipolar 1 and I am the only other one in my family with a dx of bipolar 1 as well. Add that to his suicide and I was so confused. Will I be him? Are we destined to be alike. Anger that this is the only thing he has given me etc. I felt numb to it for quite a while. I cried once for about 2 minutes and that was all. I felt guilty for that and a bit worried really about what kind of person I was.

I felt a real sense of loss that because he was dead he could never appologize, he could never make amends or try to change and make it better. Somehow after all the abuse I still somewhere in the back of my mind held onto some hope that he would change, that he would value me.

My dad had a ruptured brain aneurysm when I was 5. It was a life changing event for me in a very negative way. Tho he survived he then became an abuser and was never the same man. This is when all my emotional problems started. Well a year after my dad died I had a cat scan that showed what looked like two brain aneurysms. I had to wait a few weeks for a cerebral angiogram. Those were some of the longest weeks of my life, as I have my own children and am a single mom. And once again I felt like he was some how capable of reaching beyond the grave to inflict a final blow, a final way to say..see you are going to have to suffer as I did or be like me. I am the only child who has seemed to inherit his illnesses. Illnesses that seemed to have helped him become what he was. It is not a good feeling. Knowing I was the least liked by him, and seemingly most linked to him.

I honestly probably did not handle his death very well. Luckily I got through that and have tried to make peace with it. I don't notice the aniversary dates, fathers day comes and goes without a thought. I just tired to let it all go and not look back. When I look foward it really doesn't matter, my life is good and continues moving on.

But I am nothing like my father. I am strong, compassionate, loving, generous, and brave. I have fought my way to recovery from Bipolar, from an eating disorder, from being a homeless youth and have built a strong loving home for my children. I have created a life where I feel bliss, I have more than survived. I am a beautiful being with the heart he never had and could not kill. And with that I have compassion for his life and try to understand that which even I cannot comprehend. That is something I try to remind myself of when I ever do think about my father. I can't help notice how different we really are.

It's hard when an abusive parent dies. It's not easy to talk about it with others, it's not your usual greif. I felt isolated in that. And there really is no right way to feel about it or deal with it, for the most part I just felt confused about how to feel or what I felt at all.