Dear ‘Dad’

It’s been 20 years since I last saw you, well, spoke to you. Apparently you held me when I was 7 months old, the one and only time.

Well, I guess I just wanted to write this down, somewhere. The only memory I have of you is when I was 5, I saw you in the garden of some woman’s house, playing with another little girl, I shouted hello, stood there and waved, and you didn’t even look up, didn’t even acknowledge me, which even then, stung.

I’ll never forget my final day of primary school either, when that woman came up to me with that huge grin on her face, laughing oddly when she said ‘You know, you’re daddy lives with me and your best friend.’

I ran home and asked my mum what that meant, and I was told how you lived with the girl who had been my best friend throughout school, and that I was never allowed round to her house because that’s where you lived. That still kills me now, cause I never spoke to her again, not only did I realise you had lived right around the corner from me my entire life, but I lost my best friend. I hated her, because she had MY daddy.

But I’ve come to realise, the only person I hate, is you.

You’ve made trusting any man a challenge, I don’t know how to, because I never had anyone to show me. Throughout high school, I used to see so many dads dropping their kids off, kissing them on the cheek before waving them off, and it made me so mad, what did I ever do to deserve feeling like I wasn’t good enough for you to be my hero?

Even now, 21 years later, I wonder what it would have been like to come home and have you there, to have had someone to look up to, actually, that’s not fair on my brothers, they were the three best father figures I could have wished for, they taught me everything you should have, they told me they loved me every time I went to sleep, when I got hurt they were there to clean up the cuts, kiss my knee better when I fell over, taught me to play football, taught me to ride my bike, whenever I was sad, one of them was always there to put a smile back on my face, they were 100 times the man you could ever be, and I’m so thankful for that, because they showed me not all men are insignificant.

The only thing they could never change for me was the feeling of abandonment, because they never did, they were always there, they were always willing to be my heroes.

I guess this will be the only letter I ever write you, I just wanted to say, I don’t hate you anymore, I don’t wish you were here, because I have no need for you. I became the person I am now without you, I’m fulfilling my lifelong dream of living in America without you. I just hope I can find a man who can be the hero his kids deserve, without you.

Your Little Girl (The one you didn’t think was worthy)

Chels

Dear absent mother,

I’m an entire fifteen feet away from you as I type this, but I don’t believe you really, genuinely register that. That fifteen away, your daughter, who you never wanted to bear, who you’ve dumped all the responsibilities typically reserved for a spouse upon, to whom you constantly remind of her (physically) absent, “deadbeat” father and all his shortcomings, is broken. I’m broken mom and it’s all your fault.

I’ll be seventeen in less than a month, as you have so courteously reminded me several times today in attempts to shame me for what you’ve deemed inability, and I’m scared. I’m all too aware of how nonexistent our relationship is, damaged far beyond the shallow scrapes that most teens’ hormone-induced provocations and just-because-I-can defiance could ever inflict.  I’ve tried to salvage our relationship countless times, but each and every time I try it blows up in my face without fail. I try to lighten your financial burdens. You call me an ungrateful narcissist. I try to offer insight on a conversation topic. You threaten to “squash me” if I ever contradict you in public again. I volunteer to bike to the store to save you the energy and gas wasted on a small purchase. You lecture me about “give and take” when I don’t wanna bike to get you ice cream, even though I’ve had 7 hours sleep in the last 57 hours (working nonstop for my AP class at school, which included an all-nighter) and you’ve been on the couch all day because you’re unemployed. There is no pleasing you.

I’ve been seeing a psychotherapist for years, and still I cannot make progress whenever you are the obstacle I must face. Because of you I fall into the roughly 25% of children of divorce whose daily behaviors and mentality are still hindered by the separation after three years. I officially fall under the label of “emotionally traumatized”, and when I found that out I had a five hour meltdown, sobbing in my room until I shook and my eyes burned and I passed out. This was news to you the next day, despite you having been in the living room but a room away at the time. I told you it was existential dread. You bought it. I’ve never expressed concern over existential dread, but you didn’t want to take up your precious time mulling over whether or not your daughter was mentally sound. Why should you? You’ve never bothered to parent before, why start now?

I’m bitter and I’ve been forced into adopting a prematurely adult outlook on the world because of you. But what’s worse, what’s the most core-shaking, will-breaking, painful part of all this is seeing the other parents. My chest tightened watching Alex’s mom announce “I want to hug my baby girl” and pull her daughter into a tight embrace, even though she’s eighteen (since you seem to assume that with age comes the dissipation of need for things like love, support, and compassion). When Megan’s mom offered me tea and some calming words when I wasn’t feeling well, I felt genuine confusion; my own mother wouldn’t show concern for me in this situation, why is this stranger going out of their way?

I wish you would say please and ask nicely, instead of barking with impatience even though it’s the first I’ve heard of a request. I wish you would treat me with as much affection as you do our cats, it isn’t fair that you can smother an animal with praise and adoration while your own flesh and blood rots from emotional withdrawal. I wish you hadn’t used my seventh grade chorus concert as a means to get dad out of the house so that you could break in and steal his papers, insisting that you couldn’t send my gown with me when the custody switched and that you’d have to drop it off at the concert yourself (which you were late in doing, given the break-in you were busy committing). I wish you had never confided in me that you had never wanted kids, despite how you fought tooth and nail to cut dad out of the picture when you two split. I wish you would stop bringing up my (failed) attempts at lying when I was eleven and dad wanted to keep secrets from you. I wish you hadn’t interrogated me to get the truth in the first place.I wish you hadn’t left me to walk a mile in the hot summer sun with my large, heavy suitcase, those couple of body-boards, and whatever else I’d brought back from dad’s, just to spite me for asking to stay the night with him before he had to fly back to Canada. I wish you would admit to having abandoned me like that only to show up three hours later with Taco Bell in hand and acting like you hadn’t ignored my frantic calls or deliberately worried me near out of my mind with your selfish disappearing act. And I wish you would treat me like I wasn’t a stranger or some hoodlum off the street; is it that hard to believe I take offence when you imply that I’m having sex (though I’m abstinent) or doing drugs (nothing without a proper prescription or outside the recommend dose)?

I’m polite to everyone and harbor a strict moral code. Egotistical as it may sound I’m immensely talented and I know it. I try hard to be outgoing and kind, even worked out a deal with my church to keep my friend from being evicted once. And yet somehow you manage to make me feel like utter shit when you recite from memory the laundry list of little things I’ve ever fucked up on.

I try to hope and give you credit for the little things, that you haven’t hit me (yet), though I recall you threw your glasses with considerable force freshman year, that I have a roof overhead, which your parents finance, etc. I can’t help but think myself in circles trying to scrounge up some way to rectify this; I’m not eighteen yet, so there’s still time right? Time left to craft something, anything, that can be looked back upon and make having lived together at least minutely worth it.

Dear Mother

Dear Mother,

Your cruelty and neglect have left an indelible mark on me that no matter what I do nor how much time goes by it can never erase. You are still alive though I think you would be better off dead. Your emotional abuse of the three of us makes me hate you more than words can even tell you, you did not deserve to have children and I truly hope you know that your time on this earth as a mother you have been worthless. I can’t believe you could leave your children alone by themselves for days and days on end, not calling to check on them, no food, no money, you paid no mind to our education deprived us of all the normal things that children have, both materialistically and emotionally. No one has ever made us feel as bad about ourselves as you have and for that I HATE you more than anything. You let our step father take from us everything he could take and you took no real steps to stop it, you just went right ahead and endangered us more and more and lied to the family, I wish nothing bad upon but I sure don’t wish you well either. Only on your judgement will you know how useless a human being you were in this world and that no one loves you not even your children or your parents and not even your sister we hate you mother and if we ever see you again it will be far too soon.

Dear Mom,

I’m writing you this because I feel so horrible right now and you aren’t here for me to talk to. I can’t even pick up the phone and give you a call and it’s something I need to be able to do so badly right now. Lately I’ve been feeling so alone in the world and no one can make me feel like I belong. Of course Jake is there and can calm me down, but I’m always scared to tell him how I’m feeling.

The reason why I feel so alone lately is because I feel like I might scare people off. I don’t think I look scary to others, but in my classes people usually put 1-3 seats in between them and me. Why is this? I know I’m not a preppy girl and that I don’t have the best of clothes, but I’m still a human just like them. I’m afraid that they might be avoiding me because of my weight too. I just so badly want to hear you tell me that I’ll be fine and that I’ll find someone one day who will love me even though I’m not skinny. Marie tells me this, but her word is nothing compared to yours because you knew how it felt to be overweight. You were the one person I could go to when my weight was bothering me and I’d leave feeling better about myself.

I hurt so badly mom and it finally got the best of me. I promised that I wouldn’t cut ever again because I know you wouldn’t want me to do it and I haven’t cut ever since you died. But the other day I broke that promise, I felt like shit and I needed to feel something other than sadness. But it didn’t help me at all, I immediately felt so bad because I know that you wouldn’t want me ever doing this again. I’m so sorry mom, I just wish I could talk to you again. Sometimes I wonder if the only way that I’ll ever be able to talk to you again is if I die. Sometimes I wish I was dead, but then I remember how you and grandma both believed that taking your own life was one of the worst things someone could ever do. 

I just needed to get that off of my chest mom. I hope that maybe one day you’ll forgive me for breaking my promise this one time, but I won’t know until I see you again. Please give me a sign that you’re still watching over me.

Love,

Your baby girl.

Dear Absent Father,

You left 39 years ago & was never heard from again. Your 5 daughters searched and searched for you, even hired a few private investigators to find you, but never found even the smallest lead. Thirty-nine years later (2 days ago) we found you (FaceBook is a wonderful thing). You have a different name & a different birth date but there’s no doubt it’s you. You even posted a picture of yourself from when you were still with us and commented that it was you in your younger years. You’re close to 80 now. You even commented on a posting I made on the internet searching for you saying that you had met a man that fit the description.

I’ve researched you (with your bogus name) & found out many things about you. I know where you’ve been, that you were married again (although you never divorced our mother), where you’ve lived and where you live now. I know of the lies you’ve made people around you now, like you saying you were in Vietnam & that you have a Masters degree. You were never in college, and you were in the Air Force but you were dishonorably discharged, never in any war. I know many more things I won’t post on the internet. I messaged you on your 3 different facebook profiles & even emailed you. You didn’t respond. I know you’re alive because of the research I’ve done. I seen you on a dating site just yesterday.

I’m not a stalker … I’m a daughter that needs closure. 

Why

Dear absent father, 

I never knew a time where we spent longer than a year together. When I was 6 you moved from America to Asia and Nobody explained that to me or explained to me what exactly you were doing there. Sure I would visit you during the summer but when you work 60 hours a week I barely spend any time with you. I understand that child support being six hundred dollars a month can be expensive but why did you have to move half-way around the world to get a good paying job? Were there no good engineering jobs in the States or were all of them in other countries? Why did you express anger at me for not understanding the full scope of going to another country when you are as young as I was? I was 6 years old and you treated me like I should have the maturity of a 30 year old. Why did you leave me with an emotionally abusive mother who worked 60 hours a week and took her day out on me like it was my fault? A woman who threatened to kill herself when I was five? A woman who smashed appliances that didn’t work? A woman who is a rageaholic. Why do you support your step-children more than you ever supported me? You paid their way through college and supported them emotionally and financially. Why was your biological son the one who was abandoned? Why did you blame me for our failing relationship? Why don’t you love me?

Sincerely, Your Son

Dear absent father,

Thanks for not being there for me for most of my life. But I sincerely mean that. Thanks to you not being there, I never had to deal with you, and your shitass dickholeness. I never had to deal with the whole bunch of sisters that you’ve produced to other mothers, never had to deal with having you there. The only good thing you ever brought into my life, was my life. That is all you are. You are nothing more to me.

Signed, your daughter who is so much better without you.

Dear Dad

It’s been just over nine years since you left this world. Time has only given me distractions but has not taken away any of the pain of losing you. I was twelve when you took your life and I remember the day so clearly even now. I had felt sick all day at school but I still had no idea. I had no idea when  Mom picked us up from the babysitter’s with a tear-stained face, I had no idea when we drove the hour to my grandparent’s house even though we had school the next day, and I had no idea what my Grandma was going to tell me when she sat us down on the couch. 

I miss you so much. Sometimes late at night I lay in bed and have flashbacks to the amazing times we had together; you were a great dad.  Bike rides, reading, looking at the stars, shooting off rockets…I just wish you had thought you were great too.

I understand why you did it…I guess. At least, I try to. You were sick, you thought you were protecting us. But what you didn’t realize is that having a father in our lives could have protected us more than anything. Your life was guilt-ridden, you invented reasons to hate yourself. And for a long time I struggled with hating you too, for leaving us. I’m not angry with you anymore though, not really. 

I guess I just want you to know that I still love you, I still miss you, I still wish you were here. It kills me to know that you’re going to miss my college graduation, you won’t walk me down the aisle, and you’ll never meet my family, I would have loved them to meet you and see what a great man you were and I would have loved to still have you in my life…

And I wish the last time we had talked I hadn’t rushed you off the phone to get back to watching a television show. I should have told you to stay and talk to me, I should have realized you were sad, and I should have made sure you realized how much I love you. I don’t remember if I said this to you the last time we talked, like we did at the end of every conversation, but I’m saying it now: 

I love you buuunchies times a million times as many stars as god ever created <3

Dear Father,

Remember when we would do everything together? When you taught me how to ride a bike? When we would go out to the pet store and look at all the kittens for sale? When we would hide under a blanket and pretend we were under attack? Well I do. I remember you were my hero. I looked up to you because I was your little girl. You promised you’d always be with me, no matter what. You promised you’d stay.

Then one day, I saw you leave. I watched you walk out the door and never come back. Mom told me that you were just going to your brothers for a few days and you’d be back. But you didn’t come back. I don’t understand how you could just pack up your things and leave. Your mom left you too so you know how I”d feel. You knew all the pain and hurt and sadness I would feel, and you still did it anyways. You never even gave a reason why you left. You just did. You just started ignoring me for two years. You didn’t talk to me. You didn’t see me. It’s almost as if you forgot about me.

Then you come back into my life. I’m angry at you but you just expect  me to take you back automatically? Fuck no. You made the conscious decision to leave and you knew what pain I would go through, and you still went through with it. Because you left, moms addiction got worse, I started cutting and having an eating disorder. I almost killed myself because I felt like I wasn’t good enough. If you left without a reason and didn’t acknowledge my existence  of course I wasn’t going to feel like I should be on this planet. 

But then you came back. Though this time, you found someone new. You found a new girlfriend (now wife) and you started living with her. She has a daughter from a previous marriage the same age as me. You guys have a fantastic relationship. As if she’s known you her whole life. You replaced me. How could you replace your little girl?

Now because of you, I can’t have a normal relationship with a guy. I always go for the guys who could have no problem leaving. For the guys who don’t treat me right because you never did. Whenever I find a guy I like, I cling onto him. I don’t ever want him to leave so I don’t let him. I have abandonment issues now and it’s all because of you. Thanks Dad. 

Dear Absent Mother

God I miss you. So very much. I hardly knew you, by the time I was able to actually have a relationship with you, you were too ill. Too scary. I’m so sorry for finding you scary, Mum. How’s an 11 year old meant to not be scared when they hear someone choking, when they only hear confused garbles. I wanted to talk to you, I did, but you didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand you, and it scared me. I ran away, and I’m sorry. The disease took away your body and your mind. I miss going to work to see you. I miss finding you at home. I want to go back to the days of bowling and swimming and sports days, the days before the disease took you, and before I knew it might take me too. 

I miss you so much. I only make jokes because otherwise I don’t know how else I’d cope. I’ve no one to talk to. Jim’s depressed, Nan’s stressed and your brothers are in Canada. I wanted to join you a lot, you know. Planned it, wrote the notes. I couldn’t do it in the end. I don’t know what to do, and all I can do is pretend it doesn’t hurt. Just because I don’t cry when I’m meant to, doesn’t mean I’m not upset, right? You understand that, don’t you…

I wish we had more time together, and I’m sorry.

Your daughter.

Top