disarchetecture pt 1 (a short and not so disarchetectural start, but a start nonetheless)

i suppose it is appropriate to write here, mostly by name.

i have entered a crisis, and am yet again in need of a complete deconstruction of my mind. if i am to fairly attempt to set this down, then i will likely have to account for any previous such efforts at deconstruction.
my crises thus far in life have been catalyzed by realizations that i was causing suffering to someone that i loved. presently, i have hurt my fiance in a way that i did not see until it was too late, and she was already VERY deeply affected by it.

in my life, i have striven to escape becoming like my father. he has never been able to fathom the effect that he has had on others, or the miseries he may have caused them. i do not judge him here. he is near unanimously regarded as a great man. he is perhaps as nearly unanimously regarded as an asshole. but, in my experience, i have found that he is perfectly capable (until inebriated enough) of being agreeable towards friends. but when you are, or become, his family, things change.
i was fortunate(?) enough to observe a particularly stark example of this at his second wedding. he and his new wife got in a fight (about me actually) at their reception party. he had been mostly a nice guy as he had been courting her, and through their engagement. he went to bed angry on their wedding night, and awoke transformed back into that which he had been my whole life, when he lived with my mother and i. what had he been? this is the first important thing to cover. his behavioral mechanisms were so crucial to my development, especially since my mother was so passive (in his presence), and i was an only child.

how to describe my father.....?