Hello, daughter,
What I’m about to tell you is very delicate, and I wonder myself why I’m saying it. I have crossed countless deserts for a long time, never to dare to look at myself in the mirror.
Yes, I took advantage of your innocence and your body when you were little. I still don’t even dare to say or think that I raped you. That word makes me think of those criminals from whom I have always felt alien and distinct.
I’m not writing these words to make you forgive me. I can’t even understand or forgive myself. That’s why I’ve decided to live in utter denial. I can see that I have a terrible shadow, a dark corner, but I’d rather not go into it.
That’s how, I don’t know how things happened. It was as if I became another person, a person I don’t know at all. I have no idea how that happens. But I have too much pride and too much denial to dare to go and heal myself.
What? Go and say I’m the respectable family man who suddenly turns into a monster who rapes his daughter? What difference does it make? The damage is already done. If I get convicted, if I go to jail, what’s the difference? What difference will it make if the neighbors know. What difference will it make if the family knows?
The damage is already done for a long time, and it lives on inside me and then inside you. I knew very well that I was committing pure evil, but I couldn’t help myself. A dark force inside my arteries took control of my energies. I perform the action and I enjoy it, and then that enjoyment turns into a terrible burden which I carry and which you carry.
My guilt and shame only come out as black anger and aggression. Look what I’ve done with your mother! Such a beautiful and fragile lady that I have destroyed over the years. I keep her in my prison to force her to love me through force, possession, jealousy and terror.
I thought about suicide for a long time, and then I found that denial was a better idea. It’s not my whole person I’d like to kill, but just that sick, dark part of me. By ignoring it, by shutting it off, it’s like I committed half a suicide. That way I can continue to pretend I’m an honest, respectable and even kind father.
I’ve been lying to myself for a long time, and I completely believe my lies. Instead of presenting myself as a pathetic rapist and human scum, I prefer to proudly say and repeat that I am such a man with such qualities.
My dreadful fear of seeing my ego destroyed turns into anger that I can no longer control. Whether I want to or not, I would rather destroy houses and smash people than face my own humiliation.
For a long time I thought it might be possible to transform myself, but I never found the way. How can I do my daughter? Do you have any idea yourself?
I see you going the same way I did. Your anger is my anger and your hatred is my hatred. What you hate about me, you carry and nurture inside yourself.
Proud like your father, and despicable like your father.
Like me, to overcome your wounds, you found yourself replicating the same destruction. Just as I held you and bound you by my strength, you hook men to you as your prey.
You rape men and assault them, and either you throw them away, or they throw you away; you call these relationships “love”. I also love you, and I have enjoyed raping you. You learned it from me. And I learned it from my mother. And my mother learned it from her father… And all these people thought they were exceptions!
As soon as a man loves you, you see your father in him and you hate him with all your power.
And as soon as you love a man, you cling to him with so much hope of regaining your father’s love that you end up destroying yourself.
You call that “love” too.
Yes, go ahead, try it out, and try it out again…
Seek your way… Seek love…
Seek success!
Believe that you are a beautiful, wise and joyful child!
Believe that you are beautiful, full of tenderness, trust and love!
I also believe the exact same thing about my pathetic person.
It is a theater that has been played for a very long time in the family.
That’s why you’ve probably noticed that I ignore you and don’t care about you too much. You don’t exist in my life and I don’t exist in yours.
You’re just a female version of myself. A very respectable person with seductive eyes, but also a filthy whore, a scoundrel, a sick egoist, a rapist, a scumbag, a loser.
I spit on you and I invite you to spit on yourself.
You might find in it your own liberation!
Go ahead, drink my words as you drink poison!
Try to forget me and you’ll see! As soon as you look in the mirror, you will find my most hateful face loving you with its most beautiful smile.
Translated from French.
Nadim M. 