*Caution, Emo Blog Ahead* (Patreon)

Today is my father's first birthday since he died. I didn't even realize it until my sister messaged me about it.I feel sad but I also feel guilty, like I shouldn't get to feel sad because I didn't realize it was his birthday on my own. Given, he was massively abusive and wasn't present for at least half my life, but I was a lot closer to him than my mother and always saw a lot of his personality in myself. I always weirdly admired him although I refused to speak to him the last 5 years of his life (there's only so many times a person can try to steal your identity and emotionally abuse you before you have to cut them off). Of my two parents, he's the only one I actually believe may have loved me - albeit in his own warped way - and now he's gone.My first instinct upon learning it was his birthday was to listen to songs I knew he liked but all the ones I could remember are kinda sad and I don't want to cry. However, thinking about crying made me think of him crying (he was super emotional and a pathological liar; he could cry at the snap of his fingers), which made my eyes start to well up and my sad-guilt flare up to the point I feel suffocated. There's no one I can emotionally-relate to in this situation despite the fact I share my father's death with 7 siblings. He completely abandoned all but 2 of us and my counterpart is still a teenager who was raised solely by him and knows nothing else. She has every right to feel devastated, she lost everything she had when he died. It's not fair of me to even begin to suggest I relate to her sadness just as it's wouldn't be fair to discuss that I miss him with the children he abandoned to the foster care system. I'm not sure how you're supposed to mourn an abuser that you're bound to for all eternity. You can't say you miss him or it undermines his abuse and its impact on you. You can't resent him because he's already suffered the greatest consequence of all and you kinda wish he hadn't. It's emotional purgatory.