This is a PTSD rant because tomorrow is my abusive father's  birthday.  I was out of contact with him for  a healthy 8 years from 1992-2000 before I  checked back in to see if he had changed.   Then when after he punched my face on a Christmas visit in  2010 I was sure he wouldn't ever change,  I've been good about keeping a healthy  distance from him for 5 years now. 

Just as in 1992-2000, my life has thrived  since I stopped surviving him after 2010, so it's not  that on his birthday I get sad because I miss  him.  I have nothing to miss, he was never a  loving father.  He was just a mentally ill  bipolar who put himself up on a religious  pedestal as his ruse to avoid treatment.   When his symptoms overwhelmed his religious fanatical outlets, he  used me as his whipping boy to relieve the  mania or the depression. 

Afterward, he  often didn't even remember the episode.   Not even the next day after I showed him  my blood that he spattered on my bedroom  wall in the beating he gave me.  He'd just go back to church and pretend to be a saint like nothing happened.  As if what he ignored he'd done wasn't enough, he went further:  he expected for me to make a fuss over him on his birthday.

So those being the memories I have of him,  I am not sad every August 16 on his  birthday because I miss him.  No, it's  because I grieve that little Muji  never  having had a nurturing, loving daddy.  I miss  the fact that, now that I'm an adult and I  know from others how good having a loving father can  be, in the cards fate dealt me, one of those good daddy cards wasn't included.  And we'll leave it for another day to talk about how I missed getting the good mommy card, too.

Sticking to this topic, I did pretty well fathering myself as a kid.  As far as religion goes, I even ended up finded enough real stuff about it in spite of my abusive churched dad that I became a hospital chaplain.  I enjoyed feeling actually useful in comforting people. 

So  most days of the year I feel pride in myself about all of that.  But this one day a year, I notice  the lack, and it still hurts for a day.  Then it passes. In large part because I can share about it with you, and I know others here understand for real.

Thanks for letting me let off some sadness and some steam here about this year's August 16.