MrKang:
Naaaah

Seriously?

Very thin line, btw tough love n cruelty!

mysteriouxx:


Seriously?

Ya I'm damn serious,a strict but necessary rule that keeps you from being hurt by those closer to you.
If the person has been compromised,then that's it . . .

@ op i must in entirety commend your write up, I respect good work when I see one...starting from the dictions,the accurate grammatical constructions etc...it is good you have already forgiven your Dad. The truth your waz unable to drop his fixations...He internalized and griped the up bringing pattern introduced by his parents without foreseen the adverse effect it ll have on his family as a whole...my advice to you is try to strike a balance BTW ur experience wit ur Dad nd your Future approach towards raising your own kids, so u won't over love them trying to avoid and atone for your Dads sins...dis advice is coming from a psychological perspective

Forgiveness doesn’t mean to include that person back into
your life: Forgiving someone does not always mean to have
that person back into your life like nothing happened. There
are people whose sole presence is toxic in our lives. These
kind of people need to be loved from a distance, may be your
father, your brother, your once best friend, your ex. Life is too
short to make it harder and painful by allowing them back
into our circle of peacefulness. Thanks OP .
They always expect things to go back to as they were.

I'm so touched by this piece, kudos OP.

MrKang:
Naaaah

.All very,?

justkool:
.All very,?

Don't know where you're getting at but YES .

positivestory:
I still remember the day when I told my mother I no longer wanted to be at home. I had had enough of so much pain, sorrow and the constant yelling everywhere. I saw my mother cry bitterly as she took the final decision to get a divorce. I was ten years at the time.

My father had always been a very strict man. He used to believe that his ways were the right ways and that everything had a logical order, he even considered himself “successful” because he had his own house, his own car, a high paid salary and a family. He indeed was a success at his office, since he had the guts to get everything done, but his own workers didn’t seem to follow him for the right reasons. They described my father as a man who liked to give orders and to keep things under control. He even told jokes at the expense of others to keep things “cool”, but in reality, those jokes were hurtful and humiliating. I don’t remember my father having any friends, nor saw him inviting anyone to our home for Christmas.

Father was always working hard, two shifts for five years. He later told me he did all that to give us a good future, but he was never present. I don’t recall him playing that much with me nor taking us on vacation. In fact, he used to beat me with a belt if I didn’t get good grades at elementary school. He used to bury in my head the thought of “be better than anyone else”. He wanted me to be as competitive as him, as successful as him. He wanted me to become like him.

But that wasn’t the whole reason why my parents divorced. My father, thinking he could do whatever he wanted, cheated on my mother with five different women, thinking my mother was not good enough for him anymore. Later in life I understood that it was him who felt not good enough.

One day he got very drunk and began calling me names like “Little cockroach” because he knew I would never be as good as him. That’s when I lost it. At ten years old, I jumped towards my father and blindly hit him in every part of his body that I could reach with my tiny fists. My mother came running from the kitchen and had to separate us because, since my father was a mountain of a man, he was easily giving me the beating of my life. That was the last straw for my mother.

That night she kicked him out of the house and I could never see him again for a few years.
After that day, we were shocked, but felt a small piece of relief. Eventually we finally found peace. The divorce helped my mother to mature, to become stronger and wiser. She had always been there for me and my kid sister. I grew up with the love of my mother who played the role of a father as well. My raising made me think that, if I ever had children, I would never let them live the hell I lived.

Time heals all wounds, or so that’s what they say. The age and many life experiences gave me the strength to finally see my father once again after so much time at a very sad family event. He was all by himself. None of the women he used to cheat with were in sight. We spoke few words, gave him my condolences and departed. It had been weird to see my father again after so much time.

One day he fell sick with kidney failure and was about to die. I went to see him at the hospital and it was really shocking to see the once strong man reduced to a thin ghost of a man wrapped in a hospital gown. There was no one around to help him but an aunt. No friends, no other women, no one. He was all alone. I spent days and night taking care of him at the hospital, we would joke around and remember the few good things we shared during my infancy. I soon realized my father was just another child that was hit and humiliated during his childhood. His parents had raised him the same way he was raising me, therefore, he grew up with those values carved in his heart.

That’s when I realized it made no sense to continue hating him for the horrible childhood he gave me. Life was already giving him a very tough lesson. Loneliness can be worse than death itself.

My father eventually recovered and left the hospital. To this day, I still speak to my father and pay him a visit at his house from time to time to see how he is doing. He is still the prideful man I knew in my infancy, and is still expecting me to become better than him. But this time, his words don’t hurt me at all.

This part of my life made me learn these valuable lessons:

1) Forgiveness doesn’t mean to forget: Some people say “Forgive and forget”, I would say instead “Forgive, don’t forget, but don’t let the memory of what happened control you”. I learnt this the hard way, sadly. Some days I would get very angry and some other days I would feel hopeless and unloved. This eventually pushed the few people that really cared for me away. I couldn’t change the past, and I didn’t like the insecure angry woman that I had become. I had to vent out that pain and anger.

One thing that helped me was to write down all the things I wanted to say to my father, then I would read the letter many times as I needed and finally, I would burn it. Watching the fire consume the letter that had all my frustration helped me ease the burden in my heart. Some days, when I felt the ugly feeling again, I would just put my hand over my heart and say a prayer and repeat the same mantra to myself over and over again:

“I am here, I will help you. We are in this together, I will protect you”

I never knew the power behind those words, but after repeating that sentence to myself, I would feel the anger go away.

We have to vent the anger (As a metaphor would say “Empty our cups”) in private (To avoid hurting the people that love us) in order to make space for love and peace. We learn from the pain and there is no way we can easily put it under the rug, but we can control the feeling it gives us when remembering those moments.

Don’t let the memory of the past inflict you pain in your present life.

2) Forgiveness doesn’t mean to include that person back into your life: Forgiving someone does not always mean to have that person back into your life like nothing happened. There are people whose sole presence is toxic in our lives. These kind of people need to be loved from a distance, may be your father, your brother, your once best friend, your ex. Life is too short to make it harder and painful by allowing them back into our circle of peacefulness.

3) Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning someone’s actions: What happened to my father might be viewed as karma by some people but for me, it is hard to call it that way. When I learned about his troubled childhood, I realized that’s where all his behavior came from. His parents raised him the same way as he wanted to raise me. I finally understood why he did what he did. But, that wasn’t excusable. What he did was wrong and was not acceptable. No matter how bad your past was, you can’t go around inflicting pain to others thinking its ok. I know a lot of people who had a very sad, painful childhood and they turned out to be wonderful parents. Pain can give huge lessons to make us a better person.

And finally,

4) Forgive to set yourself free: the most important lesson in my life. I was the target of bullying at school because at that time, children that came from broken homes were looked as troubled kids. I hated my father every single time someone made jokes about my divorced parents. Later in life I blamed my father for all my failed relationships. I hopelessly looked for approval from the men I dated in my life, only to be dumped like a hot frying pan. I was destroying myself with hatred and pain. All this turmoil made me lonely and miserable. Eventually I learned that I was the only person responsible of my life, and that blaming my father was a very coward thing to do. If I wanted to have a happy life I had to let go of the pain. It wasn’t easy, it took me years of self-discovery and soul searching to achieve this, but finally I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Trying to find something to inspire me, I came across with one quote that really struck a chord to me:

“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”

I was poisoning my life, my few friendships and my own self. I was missing the big things in life because I had spent a lot of it hating my father and my problems. I learned not to repeat the mistakes he did, and to pay attention to my own behavior. The past can be painful but it certainly can’t define us. We make our own present, we are our own person.
We can’t erase the past, but we can choose to let go of the pain in order to live a happier, fulfilling life. The road is not easy, in fact there were days when I felt I was taking one step forward and two steps backwards, and some days I would just curl up and cry. But I kept moving because I really wanted to get out of that place of isolation, I focused on myself, found new hobbies, spent time with family and eventually, good friends came by and my life felt finally lighter and at peace.

At the end, I learned that forgiveness is not about the other person, is about ourselves.

From the Positive Story - www.thepositivestory.info

u mean ur mum kicked out ur dad from his own house...men are the one suffering in today's failed marriages....marriage sucks....am going for baby mama or contract marriage

Nice

forgiveness......I don't think i can forgive both my parents

Well written article. Forgive but never forget otherwise you would get hurt again .

God bless you @op.

marshalcarter:
forgiveness......I don't think i can forgive both my parents

What did they do to you? Forgive them just for your own sake.

Snowangel4:
it is very hard to forgive people who hurt you but u have to, not because they deserve it but because you deserve your peace of mind.

I love your profile pic. Very inspiring

luciouscookie:

What did they do to you? Forgive them just for your own sake.

After forgiving....the thoughts of wah dey did keep ringin in my skull which burns ma heart

I hope and pray that our president sees this

This story Na for naija it happened or where?

I don't believe you,a woman kick a man out for naija?

While i was reading it i thought the op was my family member until i saw the man had kidney failure. Lool but my dad is almost like that and i sometimes hate it but i like to be the opposite of it when i grow up to make my children have a better self esteem

[quote author=2dugged post=51378642]Op, i am glad you could find time to write this, cos I can relate to this, it's frustrating when the source of your pain is family, at a point you begin to feel like you were destined to go through that pain and hurt till you die, especially when they don't seem to see anything wrong with what they are doing, like you rightly said, forgiveness is for your own good, I had to learn that hard lesson too.Most people walk around carrying baggage from their childhood and this has one way or the other affected their adult life, seeing that therapy is not our thing here (na who never get money chop dey go see shrink? ) most people end up transferring it to their wards, and the circle continues [/q

.ጀገሀነፈከፈየገፈጨአነጨከጀገ.ጀፈጀፈሀገደ.,'ጀገገመደጀሀበአበአነጨጀጀጨነገመጨከሀፈበአመፈአዘ

marshalcarter:

After forgiving....the thoughts of wah dey did keep ringin in my skull which burns ma heart

You will be fine just give it time And don't forget to pray about it

Tort I was alone. Sucks when as a Growing up kid nobody loved you, nobody wanted you. You feel sucidal. Mine was even worse cos both parent saw me as the source of their failed marriage. I refused to take side, had a mind of my own and was labelled black sheep of the family as the first son. It was killing . Left home at 16 going 17 to start life . He always expected I will come back when I don't find street life funny. I never did, rather I was succeeding in life and got into the uni. Then the rumour started that I had don blood money hence my younger ones should stay off me . Which they did and I hated them too for it. Celebrated all my birthdays from age 6 alone. I became a loner never when home during holidays. No home to return to till date. I still visit once I blue moon but have never stayed. Finally got talking with him after over 15years of me leaving the house. It made me stronger buy destroyed my relationship with others in life. Learnt not to trust no one, fend for my self , lack emotions , stone cold heart and depend on no body. And this is destroying my relationship with people in my life. Cos I am too distant and unpredictable. Sometimes I am happy other times I am moody or indefferent. Thank God for my wife who gradually changed me and helped me get over the nightmares the street caused me. Today I am successful they wanna come back. To who and where I often ask. I don't think I can forgive completely or forget but I can still relate with them and use it as a levarage when ever they ask me of what I don't wanna do. But I never forget to support em financially when ever I can. But never will I go back to been one happy family. Only fear is it might affect my kids who might not know their root or get familiar with their root.

Hmmmm nice writ up. Please I will like us to have a lengthy discussion

for me it's hard forgiving people who are close to you especially family. Maybe cos I still can't understand why they should feel comfortable hurting u without an iota of remorse. it's hard! But then I grew, stronger I must say especially when I had to forgive someone who wasn't sorry and accept an apology that was never said. Forgiveness is a virtue not everyone is blessed with it but with God u can.....

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I stopped reading when I got to "that night she kicked him out of the house....". I knew this wasn't a story made in Nigeria for Nigerians, so what's my business?
Again, the writer isn't seasoned, else how do you start a story from telling your mum you no longer wanted to be at home to your mum crying bitterly and kicking your dad outta the house? So the reason for their divorce was cus you were tired of being at home? Nansense!

This and worse, much worse is the story of my life and so much bitterness is holed up way down. I have learnt to keep up appearances and be a good laf, but I'm so scared I wld be my very end. Sometimes I want to walk away from it all by jumping over board and hoping all that wld remain is endless silence. But one thing that keeps me going is Tupac's poem "the rose that grew from the concrete" and Eminem's "lose yourself"......Most times I feel so alone, despite the company of those around me.

cassidy1996:
hmmmm..........life! Forgiveness is the way forward...

Airforce1 and his Dad.. The guy needs to read this.. He needs to stay far away from the dad.. That way, he can forgive him faster

"Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”,this quote jst said it all,but forgiveness is difficult,i swear.

positivestory:


My father had always been a very strict man. He used to believe that his ways were the right ways and that everything had a logical order, he even considered himself “successful” because he had his own house, his own car, a high paid salary and a family. He indeed was a success at his office, since he had the guts to get everything done, but his own workers didn’t seem to follow him for the right reasons. They described my father as a man who liked to give orders and to keep things under control. He even told jokes at the expense of others to keep things “cool”, but in reality, those jokes were hurtful and humiliating. I don’t remember my father having any friends, nor saw him inviting anyone to our home for Christmas.

Father was always working hard, two shifts for five years. He later told me he did all that to give us a good future, but he was never present.
From the Positive Story ...............


- www.thepositivestory.info

Nice story.

In life, you cant eat your cake and still try to have it!

People like you that have a "Good Father", dont appreciate what God has given you.
You come out and complain about everything he does.

Well, go and ask those guys who dont have a father, or whose father has "disappeared" to nowhere or whose father is a drunkard or a lazy f00l.

Life is really unfair, those sort of guys will GIVE ANYTHING to have your kind of Father.
Truly, those that have a Head, dont have a Cap to wear on it while those that have a Cap, dont have a Head to benefit from it.

Always appreciate what you have and make the best of it.
God might just take it from you to teach you a good lesson.

It's so sad you had to go through this as a child. I understand having a parent who makes himself seem like a god and you not good enough. I don't have one but I'm very close to someone that does. Her dad cheated with her mum with so many women and didn't even make it hidden. He constantly praised himself and his 'achievements' while making her seem like a failure. Name-calling, belittling, ridiculing and abusing for every little error was also common and I noticed it had messed with her self esteem, confidence and happiness as an adult. Sadly this does happen in some Nigerian homes and I've observed most people think it's okay.
I'm happy you came to forgive your father and move past your troubled childhood

AlanSugar:
I stopped reading when I got to "that night she kicked him out of the house....". I knew this wasn't a story made in Nigeria for Nigerians, so what's my business?
Again, the writer isn't seasoned, else how do you start a story from telling your mum you no longer wanted to be at home to your mum crying bitterly and kicking your dad outta the house? So the reason for their divorce was cus you were tired of being at home? Nansense!

That is the mentality that the WEST is pushing into our children and women of today!

Kick your husband out of the house, poison the mind of your children and let the children moan that their father is a bad person, despite working his socks-off to provide for all their needs!

That is exactly the life of people in the Western countries.
That is why they raise children that become "psychologically unbalanced" adult!

"Family Chaos" is the end-result.
May God help us.