Thoughts

I read the comment below on this page and it spoke me:

(68) Mark, April 23, 2010

The Inner Conflicts We Are Left With

Do abusive parents run out of 'credit' as a pschologist once suggested to me? Do we owe abusive parents anything especially in their old age? Are they sick or just bad or a mixture of both? Can we hate them and love them at the same time? Can we really honour/love the person whilst forgetting the behaviour? Abuse of a child by a parent, IS rejection of that child and as such does the parent really have a right to expect anything in return when they get old? and should we feel obligated to them? Parenting is a two way street, just giving birth to someone and sharing your genes with them does not automatically give a parent a right to anything where there has been abuse. Yes we are probably programmed genetically to take care of aged parents with an unwritten rule of reciprocity. But where the risks to survivial of the victim and their genes have been made so great by an abusive parent, does that 'rule' of reciprocity written as 'honouring the parent', even through a third party, still stand? An abusive partner, even after decades of marriage would likely not be yearned for, in time: not so an abusive parent. However much harm the abusive parent may have caused, part of us still loves them and part of us still feels obligated to them and part of us still misses them if we are estranged from them through necessary need to be apart for our own sanity. We love them and part of us may also hate them. We want to be with them but we also want and or need to be apart from them. This conflicted position, is beyond forgiveness or dispassionate understanding of the abusers illness, it is beyond love and beyond hate, it is beyond anger and beyond yearning. It is a no man's land of inner conflicts which cannot be computed and resolved, which cannot be integrated and laid to rest because the powerful forces of love and hate, parenting and genes are constantly at work and no human could resolve them totally. And this, ultimatly, is the burden and legacy of childhood abuse.

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