01/03/02 - 6:57 p.m.

There was a petrifying moment in the car on the way to the Chinese buffet restaurant that Dear Old Dad and Crazy Mum uses for our yearly family dinner. All I could think about was the torturous nights and violating, reaching fingertips. Why was I sitting in a car with one of the people that I hated most in the world?

How is that I can embrace him in one moment and then wish him death in the next? How can I honestly and consistently tell him to his face that I love him and then remember that there are large quantities of me that hate him deeply?

Does such a dichotomy make me false? Both emotions have equal authority, neither overpowers the other, yet I find it mentally and socially advantageous to omit the hatred and focus on the love. I see Dear Old Dad as two different people. As the man who is my daddy, who loves me and who I love, as an brilliant scientist and decent caretaker of Mum, but also as the man who is my father who shoved me into a nightmare for ten years and left his eternal bruises all over my body and mind.

Who is he really? The person that taught Brother and I how to play basketball or the monster who pulled me from my bedroom at night? I don�t know why it is easy for me to separate the corny joker from the awful silhouette on my wall.

I know that when I do think about how the combination equals only one individual, my brain seizes. I have trouble shoving those dark pictures back into their drawers. I only see the monster and forget about the man.

So here I admit for the first time on virtual paper in a long, long time.

I hate my father.

I love my dad.

And keeping the two away from each other is the only way I can continue to interact.