it's taking me a long time to recognize my father was a man who was hurt and hurting and who suffered himself as well as causing suffering. for so long i just thought he was mean spirited. but a mean spirit comes from life experience, and we never know really what our parents, or anyone experiences as trauma. even our own devolve into story and we become the teller of the tale. i want to get back to the feeling of the one who lived it, for whom it was not a story. i've carried the feelings so long, sifting through them in various therapies, but mostly intellectually. i'd like to feel everything, and let everything go.