Last Saturday my dad had to be taken out of my store by the police. It’s a long story with him, but this was truly a pivotal moment in my life…

I’m starting to realize now, at age 30, the levels of psychological, emotional, and physical abuse that not only myself but my mom and sister endured for many years at the hands of this man. It’s something we’ve actually never really talked about or even admitted until more recently.

When my dad came to the store last weekend, he started yelling at me in front of everyone in the area. He was refusing to leave, and hanging around the store, and eventually got angry and was making a scene. I was instantly taken back to the helplessness I had felt as a child and I was confronted with such a difficult decision as how to react. I realized in that moment, how powerless I had always felt in our relationship. All of my upbringing, there was never conversation with this man… it was always his way or nothing at all. It turns out there was never any reason within our relationship… something you can’t realize until the power dynamic shifts later in life. With him I had always felt stuck between a rock and a hard place… I realize there was never a right answer or action, no matter what I ever did. Nothing was ever enough to appease his expectations of me and the world. I grew up walking through a minefield… never knowing if the wrong word or reaction would trigger hours of punishment for myself or the rest of my family.

It was a difficult decision to call security on my own dad… but I had a crystal clear realization in the moment of facing his abuse again in my store of how much I desired to just let go of it all… there is always a sense of guilt to keep you around an abuser, especially if they know how to prey upon that feeling to get you to continue to excuse their behavior. But I can see it now… for all my life I have felt this guilt… that I need to save him, that I need to be the one to go one more mile in pain, to turn a Blind eye cause it’s your old man… but at the end of the day, if I’ve expressed a need for my well-being and safety and someone does the opposite… they’ve got to go, immediately, it doesn’t matter who it is.

After that experience I climbed a mountain and sat up there to find my peace. I felt angry that he can just appear in my life anytime he wants now (because now he knows where to find me because of the store) and create chaos and embarrass me in front of my staff, guests and other businesses. And this is what he has always done… but I just sat there for a long time… and I just opened my hands and let him go. most of all, I just felt sad. Of course I wish it were different… but this is my life… this is his life. We will all at the end of the day lie in the beds that we make ourselves. I am sad for him that even though he has lost every single thing in his life, including his wife and two children, he is still unable to entertain the possibility that he might be doing something wrong. We are similar in that way… hard headed and passionate… but I wonder sometimes if his own pride will be the sad end for him.

These experiences cause me to pray now. I don’t know what to think or wear to turn. Seeing him become the “crazy guy at the mall” broke my heart and flipped a switch in me all at the same time. I don’t ever want to look back ever again.