How do you love or respect a father who’s a bad person?

Maybe it was his childhood. Maybe it was trauma. Maybe he never had a chance to become better. But every time I try to understand him, it feels like I’m betraying the people he hurt.
So I stop trying to understand and just exist. We live under the same roof, pretending we’re a family.

The worst part isn’t even him anymore. It’s me.

I keep catching pieces of him inside myself in the way I react, the way I speak, the anger that slips out before I can stop it. I look in the mirror and sometimes I don’t see myself anymore. I see him.

People say you can choose who you become, but what if you’ve spent your whole life being shaped by someone you never wanted to be like?
I feel trapped between hating him and hating the parts of me that remind me of him. I don’t know how to separate where he ends and where I begin.
And I can’t tell what’s genetics and what’s years of growing up around him. Maybe it’s both.

Does anyone else feel like they’re slowly turning into the person they fear the most?
How do you escape and stop the generational trauma?