I think I just feel ashamed of and partially to blame for my father’s conservatism. I’m remembering how, in my adolescence, I felt  that I had to agree with him and essentially, submit to him in order to gain his affections, a feeling which was reinforced by his anger and disapproval whenever I expressed a divergence in thought as seen in my creativity and philosophical experimentation with ideas. His trait, as it manifests here, very much corroborates his personality profile as a psychological conservative, where authority must be regarded as absolute. This of course lent to his blind religiosity, where somehow the Bible, the Constitution, or whatever authoritative object deemed to be relevant by way of culture was employed so that an order might be instated; in middle school, I explicitly remember him informing me rather confidently that “Bible-thumping” was actually a good thing, and accordingly that the Bible should be used as the source of some pretend legality.

The problem with all of this is that he imposed this authority upon me, and claimed a quasi-religious position within the broader household as the supposed patriarch. There appeared to be no humility before a higher power, just the fulfillment of his own sense of morality as it naturally aligned with his projection onto an omnipotent power. Looking back, it’s obvious why I had then professed conservative values and ideals; I wasn’t allowed to express myself as I wished, and when I did manage to express myself, it was met with disapproval and the denial of another perspective that was different from his own. Rebellion against him, especially, was met with physical abuse as I grew into my adolescence, and that defined our relationship for more than half of a decade.

After a certain point, it was obvious then that this person who I called my dad was monstrous in, at best, his political views and attitude towards me and yet, I still aspired to gain his approval; I did so then by way of creating a persona to inhabit within as I moved throughout school and the home. Still, however, my hidden self that I had carried with me upon my birth managed to escape from the flaws and cracks in the psychic foundation and continuity of this more “masculine” character, where I experienced instead a propensity for the appreciation of the soft, emotional female musicians who I would come to relate to. Of course, when he found out about this, he derided me, asking me why I related to “this woman” in the ways that I did.

Today, he is an important part of the Catholic Church which he attends with my mother as an upstanding member of its society. And how? I suppose he feels more duplicitous concern for the well-being of those who he is closest to, whether through blood or simple familiarity, and not the Mexican or Middle Eastern strangers who diverge so greatly in appearance from him. And still, he claims to have undergone absolution from how he treated me through confession, but the root of that sinful behavior of aggression hasn’t been dealt with, as seen in his still current political views. He is still the way that he is, and he claims to love, but I don’t think he knows a love that isn’t subservient or convenient to him. This is seen in the event of him being challenged in some amount, where he inevitably resorts to anger or denial through a strongly said “no,” instead of the appreciation or validation of another viewpoint. Again, this corroborates his psychological conservatism.

Of course, his authoritarian position in the family can apparently only be utilized and exercised to an extent; he praises Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and other “strong” men like those in Russia so long as those men don’t impart the more feminine qualities of the God from the New Testament. This is the crux of the issue, I think; the power of these men represent, to him, the entelechy of a masculinity, and not the very sin or flaw that confounds and pervades humanity and which brings about the evils of this world. Power corrupts, and from this power comes punishment by the hands of the newly founded oppressor to the oppressed, the master to its slave, so that if only the slave knew what was right or wrong, the master would have no need to punish them.

All of this is to say that I reject my dad’s teachings, and hope to instead found a new self that can be loved in accordance with my own values, rather than having to submit to another’s will. I hope that, eventually, I won’t have to feel guilty or ashamed, being that I will have created distance from that version of myself to the person that I am today. I must say, though, that I have always been particularly interested in a rebirth as was presented in the myth of Christ’s resurrection, and I think that this stage marks an important step in what the Jungians call individuation, a realization of a self as it is distinct from other entities within the world. Thus, Christ’s resurrection is symbolic and archetypal, enshrining a process which the Gnostics might call gnosis, the knowledge of and awakening to a divinity within you.