I turned 39 last Wednesday and to celebrate I’m going to write about Star Wars.

I’ve written before (and before [and before]) about my abusive father, and how he loves ruining my birthday, so I’ll skip past the basics and get straight to the meat of the matter.

Last week, while I was turning 39, my father was stalking my sister. He sent a representative, a pastor who knows (and doesn’t care) about my father’s history of unrepentant and unrelenting abuse of his three children. This pastor, an idiot, passed on to my sister the information that our father is sick, very sick, dying even, and wanted his children to know. According to the pastor, my father has cancer, and is having a kidney removed.

Frankly, I don’t buy it. When I still tolerated my father’s presence he would call me crying, leaving desperate voicemails that time was short and he needed to speak with me about his estate. I would return his calls only for him to bouncily answer, saying that actually he’d had a melanoma removed a couple weeks ago, and was fine, and just wanted to chat. 

In case you can’t tell, my father is a narcissist and like all narcissists, he needs a steady supply of sycophants and victims, or his psyche will shrink and his health will suffer as he experiences withdrawal. If you’ve seen any of those “before and after” shots of P. Diddy since he’s been in prison, you know what I’m talking about. In Star Wars terms, it looks something like this:

Master Yoda tells us fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. My father’s fear of being worthless has turned into anger at those who won’t praise him. His anger has built up into hate, until anyone who disagrees with him (or speaks the truth about him) is an enemy in need of elimination. But his hate has not led to my suffering…it has led to his.

It would be ableist of me to equate illness and outward appearance with evil, but it is hard to look at him and not see a Sith Lord, converted “into some aged, pale-skinned, raspy voiced, yellow-eyed monster” as Darth Plagueis the Wise put it. 

In the 1970s he was blonde, blue-eyed, sleek, and short. Readers, believe me when I say he looked a lot like Mark Hamill. But unlike Luke Skywalker he was seduced and corrupted by the Dark side.

Now he is corpuscular, afloat in his own toxins, limping, slurring, a degraded image of the flaws he’s mocked in others. Is it karma? Is it fate? Is it justice? Is it the Force? Or is it his kidneys themselves enacting revenge on a hostile host?

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If he does have cancer, and it is in his kidneys, then that makes sense. The ancient Hebrews believed the kidneys were the seat of human passions, the source of our urges, impulses, and decisions. Some even said that we are born with one good kidney and one evil one, similar to the ubiquitous cartoon angel and devil perched on a character’s shoulders. The Talmud says that “the kidneys advise.” Perhaps that is why they were known as “the reins” for their ability to push and pull and guide us through our lives, not unlike the Force.

Falling Rein
Cast out corruption,
for traitors lie inside you.
Which rein will remain:
The goodly light you ignore,
or the darkness you adore?

Whether he is sick or not, he wanted to provoke me. He hoped to frighten me into anger so that I would lash out. But since the time I slipped his choking, controlling grasp, I have gained control of myself. He wanted me to be sick and alone like him. 

Guess what I did instead?

While he sat staring at the phone waiting for me to call and cuss him out, I was cooking dinner with my partner. While he was turning 66 on Friday the 13th (how evil can you get???) surrounded by no one, I was with my mother and grandparents and girlfriend. We were laughing and loving and not thinking of you at all. When you shuffled into church Sunday morning, where people are forced to smile and shake your hand, I was curled up with the love of my life in a Valentine’s Day suite at a fancy hotel. 

People tell me to forgive and forget, to let the past be bygones, to move on, let water flow under the bridge, to live in the moment. And I am doing all of that, by being honest about the monster my father is.

If there was still light inside him, if he was seeking redemption, there might be something to say. Even the genocidal Darth Vader had a drop of the Light in him. But my father is not looking for redemption. He is looking for vindication. He lies in his deathbed expecting apologies from all those he’s pushed away with his abuse. He wants to be able to turn to his friends (or, more accurately, his employees) and say “See? I told you I was right. I told you I was good. I told you, I told you.” And then we’ll all celebrate what a good guy he’s been this whole time. He is Trumpian in his delusion.

In the time between now and the day he becomes one with the Force, I genuinely hope my father finds some peace. But he won’t find it with me, or my mother, or my sister, or my brother. Despite his red face and gaped mouth and bulging eyes and crocodile tears and quivering voice, his smallness has never been our responsibility. And he hates us for that.

I am no longer afraid of you, and so there is no anger, no hate, and no suffering. Only honesty.

May the Force be with you, asshole.