grief and anger

Lately, I have been feeling a strong pull to resolve my feelings about my dad and I have come up with the notion that I must grieve the loss of him. I know he is not dead and I don’t mean grieving in that sense. I don’t want to cut him out of my life. I want to be able to accept him and more importantly, to let go of my anger and resentment toward him. I often catch myself imagining and fantasizing about what I would say to him or fleshing out imaginary conversations. It sometimes feels perverse in that I will act out my anger in these fantasies because I will not do it in real life. It is almost an emotional indulgence. I imagine screaming at him with a string of very logical and well crafted statements that justify me in all my rage. The reason I cannot do this in real life is that I know deep down that my dad doesn’t intend to hurt me. So I guess I feel guilty for feeling angry because my dad somehow doesn’t have the emotional capacity to really “know” what he’s done. I don’t think he has the capacity to really be outside of himself. So I feel all this anger but I don’t have anywhere to put it because I can’t lash out at him. I also feel like it wouldn’t be helpful or healthy to lash out.
On the other side of the coin, I feel so righteous in my anger. I feel like I shouldn’t feel sorry for him because in the end he is an adult and adults are responsible for themselves and their actions. I am not responsible for him or his actions. I feel angry because although that’s the case, I feel like I have bore the brunt of many of his actions and he has not taken responsibility for them and frankly, never will.
So it leaves me in the place where I have to process my anger without interacting with my dad. So how the hell do I do that? My answer is going through a grieving process. I think that if I can resolve these feelings by grieving the loss of what I think my dad should be, I can come to a place where I can let go of these emotions and be able to accept him.


I invite any thoughts or guidance.

I feel the same way about my father however I don't think it is right for me to keep him in my life. I was able to channel some of the anger that I had for my dad into strenuous manual labor. Though I still feel angry toward him, it felt good to process and chip away at some of it. I did end up lashing out at him over facebook messages and I feel terrible about it because I know he feels bad about what he did to us but at the same time I felt justified because he is an adult and has no right to do what he did to the people he loved. Now I go running listening to heavy music almost every day and I think it rids me of the excess baggage.

Thank you, I forget how helpful physical activity can be very helpful for healing and mental health. Thank you for the reminder.