Mi participación en la iniciativa ¿Qué Recuerdas de Papá? (Español/Ingles)

My participation in the initiative: What do you remember about Dad? (Spanish/English)

_{In the photo: My father and I sunbathing a few weeks after my birth.}

A friendly greeting dear Hivers, we are in the first days of the week and it gives me great pleasure to write for the Holos&Lotus Community this time in the initiative What do you remember about Dad proposed by @tibaire. I always consider that these spaces are a great challenge, because it is not always easy to find again those feelings that have contributed to our emotional development. It is very difficult for me to talk about my father, especially because we did not have a good relationship, however I have been trying to heal that wound for a couple of years and I found this initiative ideal to talk about it.

My father had nothing to do with those idealized references in movies and comics that children usually see, I looked for that loving father and superhero many times in mine, but I did not find him and that was very painful. Over time the disappointments turned into anger and I could feel that I hated him deeply. In addition to the lack of affection and companionship, my father was also a generator of violence within the family, from verbal and psychological violence to physical violence. For a long time I asked myself many questions and found no answers, I took refuge in a directed rage and those feelings overwhelmed and suffocated me.

With time I have understood many things, I have reconstructed the imaginary around my father and although that does not change anything he did, it has helped me to be at peace with myself. I can say that with my father I learned everything I didn't want to be, I spent years making a deep characterization of that person who caused me so much anger and uneasiness. And although now I am not so sure that all those characteristics correspond to him, because I am aware that many of them could have been impressions produced by my own pain; what I am convinced of is that he has served me as a reference not to make the same mistakes with the people I love that he made with me and my family.

On this occasion I will give myself the opportunity to find myself with loving memories, because usually I always try to remember the bad things about him, I guess that for a while it was a defense mechanism that became an unpleasant habit. One of the things I remember very happily from my childhood is that almost every Sunday we would go as a family to a very popular park near the neighborhood where we lived. This could seem like anything, but the truth is that for me they were very important moments, because I grew up in a very small apartment, during the week my mom and dad worked from morning until night, we shared very little, so Sundays in the park were an adventure, I played from the moment we arrived until the last second there, I felt rehabilitated.

I didn't think about it until I grew up, but my mom and dad worked a lot: my mother on the street and in the house, a double day of hard work, the housework unpaid; my dad was a low-paid, semi-illiterate laborer, exposed to very high temperatures near giant furnaces that melted metal and subjected to full days without being able to sit down. Even so, they both used their one day off to go with my sisters and me to the park. It is the little things that make the difference, those incredible Sundays of games, walks and laughter that marked my childhood and filled it with so much happiness, represented a huge effort for them, an effort they made for us.

That is something that I value very much in my adulthood, because I always treasure with great joy the Sundays in the park, but not the effort behind those simple walks. For a while I valued very much my mother's effort, a woman who had to travel a long way to and from work every day, besides doing all the housework before leaving home and also when arriving home, having her Saturdays to help us with the chores, washing clothes and deep cleaning the house. But it is only recently that I think about my father's effort, his slave labor and the painful and violent upbringing he had.

It is essential for life to consider these little things, because it allows us to humanize our parents, our culture teaches us from a very young age to idealize the people we love, we godify our parents because we relate to them from the power and in the family hierarchy they are in the highest link. And this vertical way of organizing our families prevents us from seeing ourselves as equals, from understanding that our parents are human like us, that they make mistakes, that they carry pains and traumas. It is until we reach adulthood that we begin to empathize, they with us and we with them, but how beautiful it would be if we could see each other as equals from childhood, if parents would give themselves the opportunity to learn from their children and children to understand their parents.

It fills me with hope to know that times are changing, that more and more people are inventing more humane ways of relating to their children. I would have liked to have a better relationship with my father, maybe a better father, but this was the one I got, so I try to learn every day, to heal a little more and to reconcile with that figure and with myself. I appreciate this wonderful space for self-exploration, I feel very fortunate. I say goodbye until next time.