COMPLAINERS

 I was hesitant to write about this because I am throwing my dad under the bus.  He was really great in many ways.  He was great in many ways, and in many other ways, he just was awful.  I was very fortunate to have him and my mother and my two brothers.  I was a spoiled bratty kid, preteen, teenager and young adult.  Today I got to spend a little time with two dear friends, and we talked about Gestalt therapy.  I was lucky enough to be in one of their support groups 30 years ago and found it to be a great experience.  One of my friends said, "All you did was complain about it."  Whatever.  When I was in the group, I shared a weird experience with my father.  I was twelve and one girl used to make fun of me in class. I finally told my dad, and for some reason, we were alone one evening.  He was very kind and talked to me for a long time and I felt so much better.  Then right away he yelled at me about something, and I asked why he was so angry, and his response was, "I just wanted to see if you could take it, and you can't."  When I shared this little bit with the group, very quietly I heard a small collective gasp.  That seemed to be enough to affirm how bad his behavior was.  But then one of the counselors put a chair in the middle of the group and told me to tell my father how I really felt but I couldn't do it.  When everything was over, I said that my hands were shaking and one of the counselors asked if my hands could talk, what would they say.  I responded with, "I'm lonely.", and I broke down and cried.  The weight of the world seemed to have lifted on my drive home.  I turned on the radio and for some reason I had it on a Christian station.  Something I didn't normally listen to, and a choir of men and women were singing "Amazing Grace".  It was lovely and just what I was feeling.  I thought that God, whoever, the Universe was saying that it was really great to have my feelings and to not run away from them and love myself through the feelings.  I was.  Then the choir got bigger with each verse or repeated verse.  They added more voices.  This might sound weird, but I felt that the voices were sort of inside of me shouting out.  I never talked to my dad about that incident.  I didn't need to and I'm sure he forgot about it.  What I needed was God saying, "That ain't cool what your dad did."  I don't think one can forgive if they don't know who or what to forgive.  And Gestalt helped me with that.