Dear Dad

Today is one of my darkest days. I wish I could talk to you. I don’t understand why you never offered an explanation for leaving me alone. I don’t understand how you could resist staying in my life. I guess I think about you everyday, somewhere inside, wishing I could find the answer. I never think about you in my mind, that I know of. You are strictly off limits. I never talk about you. I wish the world had told you it was wrong to leave me. I wish someone in this family had stood up for my mom. I never wanted you to leave. I always wanted you to stay. I am not happy you left. I was not relieved. I thought I was relieved to have such a horrifically cruel force gone from my life. But in fact my heart changed into what now feels like a fundamentally mangled form. My mind doesn’t believe in you, doesn’t credit you with any possession of logic or love or humanity. Unfortunately my heart leads me astray. How can someone you never think about be such a daily influence? I don’t want you. See? I have tried rejecting you. But my heart knows I lie. I do want you. I never admit that. But I do. I want you to stay. So when people ask me what I want, what am I supposed to say? Nobody has proven me wrong. I have been rejected, as my heart has said it should be. It wants to make sense of why you left me, and rejected me, this beautiful sweet angel. Why am I still scrambling around in my life, trying to grab onto something and call it settlement? Why does my mind feel baseline unsettled? And then, the loneliness. Thank you for being a cold presence in my entire childhood. Why did you even marry my mom, why couldn’t you have saved us all the trouble? All this anguish. What a cruel trick. I know you wouldn’t want to hear all this from me. Maybe you don’t talk to me because you’re scared of the truth. But I’m not. I am better than your actions were to me. I release you of your hold on me. I forgive you, Dad, for torturing me. I let go of the lessons you taught my heart. I want to be free more than I want you. I invite you to leave. Get out. You are not a father. You are not a man. You are an evil presence that cannot hold me anymore.