The Bloody Doors Off

After the rehearsal yesterday for A Song for Rachel, I’d mused the possibility of extending the final moments. I’d always felt it was a bit… small. That the protagonist has a huge revelation that alters her worldview and is taking the first step towards recovery/release/healing, but something was missing. Replaying the read-through in my minds-eye, along with a brief conversation between myself, the director and one of the actors (the actor in question is 10 years old, she’s phenomenal, already won awards and has gone through Second City; when I was 10 I was watching Doctor Who), I had the idea.

The protagonist needed to apologize and say ‘good-bye’.

But when I wrote it, the response came back: “why?”

Rachel was receiving an apology from her sister, one she never felt was needed. Which meant, for all this time, Mary, the protagonist, was holding onto misplaced guilt.

Today it hit me: I’ve been holding onto misplaced guilt as well. Oh, there’s some things I’ve done wrong and bear the shame of, should feel guilty about. Apologize for.

But not this.

I was not responsible for my father’s choices. Not for his drinking. His womanizing. The break-up of my family. For finding him passed out on the kitchen floor, all from alcohol.

That. Is NOT on me.

For years I’ve been carrying around the pain of feeling helpless through all of this. That I had no control. And when faced with difficult, near-impossible choices (no matter what you do, someone was going to get hurt), that I’d default to doing nothing. Because that’s how I felt in my formative years. That no one taught me how. But it’s only now that I’m realizing the misplaced guilt that was attached to it, and made it so, so much worse.

A guilt I need to let go of. To be free from. Because it’s not mine. Never was.

For a long time I harbored envy for my brother Wayne, who was able to break free of this dysfunction,  where I wore it as heavy, iron chains. Now I want to emulate what he’s done.

I asked tonight. He said he stopped seeing him as our dad, and just as a man who made bad choices. He’s able to separate this. He (rightly) pointed out that what worked for him might not work for me. That I might need to have a conversation with dad about everything. But while I don’t know yet the path I need to take to completely cleanse my soul of this, it won’t be through a conversation with him. I know he won’t really hear my words. Would I feel better? Maybe. It’d be out there. But it could do more harm than good.

I’ve take a first step. That’s enough for today.

Tomorrow is another day.