Forgiveness

This is an incredibly complex issue for me but I am capable of forgiveness and I think that forgiveness is born of empathy and understanding. Other aspects of it can seem quite selfish, I know that part of forgiveness can be the avoidance of guilt in oneself. I try to forgive, most of my life has been extraordinarily harsh and I have sucked it up and pushed it in and thought I was forgiving but I wasn't. I was just filling a part of me with something I don't really understand but I have come to at least recognise.

I forgave my father, he abused me badly and I spent my life hating him but still loving him. I did not understand why he did this to me and so I could not deal with it. When he was diagnosed with cancer last year I went to see him for the first time in a very long time. Looking at that frail, dying man made me realise that the human condition is uncontrolled, we strive to be our best and we try to conform to the norms but we are imperfect and capable of great wrongs. My father went through a bad divorce when I was two, he lost his future during the miners strike of thatchers doing. He took on someone else's children and tried to raise 5 kids. He was just a man.

I forgave him that day, not because he deserved it, not because he had become a better man or made amends but because there was good in him, he just got it wrong. I lost a father but he had lost a son and I knew I could not carry on with the hate. I did not tell him I forgave him, I was polite and made small talk until it was time to go and then I hugged him, it was our first physical contact in 30 years and it was to be our last. He died a few months ago. A lonely man who didn't even have a funeral because nobody would have gone.

I feel sorry for him now, there were many years I would have celebrated his death but not now. Now I wish I had forgiven him sooner.

There are others I am trying to forgive but they are not finished hurting me yet. We'll get there, I only hope it will not be on somebodies deathbed again.

And just a quick note on the 'scumbag' question. I don't even know how many convictions I have. It is a lot. I have served prison time. My life was a shambles, I've been a drug addict, an alcoholic and a waster. I spent years claiming dole and I didn't finish school.

Scumbag. Proper scumbag.

I have also, put those things behind me, reformed my criminal ways a long time ago, I don't drink, I don't do drugs I work full time and I try to raise my children responsibly. I turned my life around 15 years ago and would hate to think if I was to die that I would be remembered for my failings, my children never saw them, nobody on boards has had to put up with them, my epitaph should not be polluted by them. I often find myself thinking 'sure, they deserved it' when I hear of some person shot in a gangland hit but then I remember that I too nearly died that way, that I have the history that they have held against them and I wonder do they sit crying writing messages on boards about their dysfunctional father and forgiveness?

Life is far from black and white. Scumbags are born from adversity, addiction, poverty and abuse. Some of us get out of it, some don't.