Dear Dad,
As a kid I watched movies, and ads. I listened to music and heard other children run to their own fathers yelling "Daddy! Daddy!"
And it hurt.
...It still hurts. A dull throb that I watch curiously from time to time.
The lead up to Father's Day was the day I misbehaved the most. I was a quiet child most of the time, a sweet child.
You wouldn't know that would you?
I was not a good girl that day. That day they always brought out glue and paper, car stickers and strange dotted paper to be fashioned into shirts and ties.
I clearly remember sitting at a small table, watching a teacher walk around with coloured card and offering them to each child. She had different fonts underneath with "Happy Father's day" scrawled across them. I remember the woman leaning down to me, her paper mocking me, voices only I could hear entering my heart and whispering a pain that threatened to crush me.
I remember standing up, brushing embarrassing tears aside and running out of the room. She followed me Dad, unlike you she ran after me and knelt beside me.
I remember looking her in the eyes, I remember feeling my little heart grappling with the pain you gave me. I remember curling my hands into little fists and listen to her say,
"Your dad will be sad without a present from you."
And I remember the way my heart pushed you out, how I accepted what you taught me.
"I have no father."
And I didn't.
Sure, you appear here and there. You're married to my mum. But you never laughed with me or swung me around in your arms. You never looked at me the way I saw other fathers pull their children close. As though they were precious. You never taught me what a man was. You weren't my first love or my hero.
You were the man my mum cried about late at night. I could hear her. Why did you leave her all alone? You were the man my sisters tried to win over. But always lost.
You were the man that taught me fathers were meant to love their children. Not live in their shed and go to work. To be unreliable, uninterested, uncaring.
You fed me, yet I knew every one of my siblings before they gave up on you -before they stopped hoping - would starve, if only for a chance to see you be proud of them. Be interested in them.
To love them.
To love us.
We saw the way you played with other people's children. I saw the way you laughed and talked to my best friend, as though she was your child. The way you hugged her. As though she was more interesting, more fun, more lovable then your own.
The child on the street was shown compassion.
Why wasn't the children who you earned money for... Why didn't you buy us clothes? Why didn't you help up put on our jumpers? Feed us? Teach us?
Why not?
You are not my role model. You have impacted me, but not in a way that makes me proud of you. You have confused me on gender roles, gender equality. On what my children will be like.
Relationships? I look at him and fear that one day he will be just like you.
I have never looked for your interest, because you would not give it.
But you have coloured my happiness grey with lurking childhood fears, and I fight everyday to trust him. To love him. To believe in him.
Because I never believed in you.
I hope Dad. I pray and wish that one day you will see your children for what we are. We are not yours. But we could have been.
But you walked in and out that door without bothering to care.
Without bothering to notice.
Do you see my eyes dad? They're yours. Do you see my hair dad? That's yours too.
You may one day walk me down the isle, dad.
But.
You are only a label, dad. You can pin that to your shirt and look like the real thing.
But in reality.
I have no dad.
I forgive you, because I don't want you taking up any more room.
But Daddy?
Daddy? It's a touching thought stabbed through with thorns.
Me,
704Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYsMbTyjMeV
