{"id":618,"date":"2019-07-17T12:10:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T12:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/?p=618"},"modified":"2020-10-23T18:53:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T18:53:23","slug":"the-apology-a-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/?p=618","title":{"rendered":"THE APOLOGY, a review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THE APOLOGY<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eve Ensler<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course it\u2019s triggering, but just know this and read however you need to, maybe in small bites, maybe between walks at the ocean, or talks with your therapist, but consider the nature of what it means to formulate an apology from the abuser who never would do that in real life. My father refused. Maybe yours also refused\u2026wouldn\u2019t even have the conversation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering what it would mean; knowing my father refused, I peeked in Eve Ensler\u2019s book,\u00a0The Apology.<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Then I peeked again. And again. There are differences, to be sure, in her story, her father\u2019s story, and mine, and yet some of her words have also been written by me, said by me; and I can\u2019t be the only other one out here.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still need to re-read what I may have skimmed. Soaking up her father\u2019s persona was more painful and more extended than I could tolerate on first reading. Ensler goes deeply into her father\u2019s psychological makeup, where I simply unearthed the facts of my father\u2019s childhood, not so much his deep emptiness. His chronic depression and his alcoholism were just genetic traits as far as I was concerned, as far as I was willing to look. Naturally, there was more to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The large glaring truth of never having known unconditional love, of being so woefully ignorant of how to accept his little girl\u2019s open, total trust\u2014this was Dad. He betrayed that trust earlier than Eve\u2019s father, when I was three, more when I was four, until the age of seven. I was his \u2018special girl.\u2019 He was always clear about the \u2018special.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gift for me in Ensler\u2019s work is to finally know I was not to blame for being \u2018special.\u2019 After nearly twenty years of therapy and the integration of highly protective dissociative alters that were formed in response to that childhood trauma, this is the first time I clearly see I was not to blame\u2014that it was beyond my father\u2019s capability to cope with the pure innocence of my child\u2019s freely offered unconditional adoration and total trust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my dad died, I said that I knew what my father had taken from me\u2014trust in others and belief in myself. My developing self had been destroyed when I split into separate parts to survive. I was still wary of my fragments, only beginning to realize they were the best of me, that I had lived my whole life with no knowledge of the purest, truest parts of myself. My father took that from me. I was a different person because of him. I might not have run away from home at sixteen, my life trajectory might have been more promising\u2014he had broken me and I was only then putting the pieces of my brittle self back together. I might have known I was bright, not stupid; capable, not inept; strong, not weak; lovable, not hopelessly cold and cut-off from warmth. The word \u201cbirthright\u201d entered my mind, and I let it die there. Our friends made shiva calls to my home, and I let them think I was crying for my father\u2019s death. Only I knew differently and I couldn\u2019t say my shame out loud. There was a whole life I didn\u2019t have because of my father, a whole person I didn\u2019t become because of his secret touching, a life stolen away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, the end of Ensler\u2019s The Apology <\/em>is genius. His litany of confessions reads like the chest thumping Al Chets <\/em>we confess on Yom Kippur, standing in stark distinction to my own accusations of my father:<\/p>\n\n\n\n