Apr 2014
My dad. The words that sear a hole through my heart. The words that I focus on when I need to be angry. It’s funny how those two little words can change your day, change your week, change your life. When I was a little girl, there was nothing I loved more than hearing my dad’s boots stomp through the door. I never would have guessed that those same boots would be yelling, storming, bashing through our house, tearing it apart like a row boat in a tsunami.
You taught me how to swim, but never how to stay afloat in the sea of your lies. You were my sun, but the sun, it WILL burn you. Don’t look at it too long because you WILL go blind. Your words and lies the harmful rays, slowing killing me with kindness and light.
You showered me with gifts to hide the truth. One new book for a hidden pack of cigarettes, a trip out to eat for your 12-pack of liquor. But I was too young. Too naive to realize that my world that you built was slowing falling apart, crumbling down around me, and I was in your path of destruction.
Years later I would come to realize the reason for your lies. You never wanted me. I was the disappointment with a big red FAILURE painted on my forehead. You wanted a boy. Never a girl, and twin girls at that. This was the reason you pushed me to do baseball, have all boy friends. I was the girl you never wanted, so you tried to change me. And I let you. That was the biggest mistake of my life.
I will never get back the life I had before, one free of panic attacks, social anxiety, nightmares (on the good nights), and self esteem lower that the waist bands of some boys’ pants. You wanted to change me, and oh, did you! You ******* me up for life. So I hope you are proud of yourself. You transformed a little girl who worshipped the ground you walked on into a depressed and emotionally compromised teen. You took my dreams and you ran them over with that truck that you cared so much more about than me.
There should be no reason for me to fear whenever someone talks to me, touches me, or goes in for a hug. I should not fear high-fives or fist-bumps. And yet, here I am, scared to death of what that person is going to do to hurt me. I would like to thank you for taking that trust away from me.
So before you start to make a false past about someone again, think about what you did to me. I was your daughter, you my father. Now you are just a distant memory of a lost childhood and a nightmare of my life. You are not my father. You are the man who gave me life, and then took it away just as fast.
You taught me how to swim, but never how to stay afloat in the sea of your lies. You were my sun, but the sun, it WILL burn you. Don’t look at it too long because you WILL go blind. Your words and lies the harmful rays, slowing killing me with kindness and light.
You showered me with gifts to hide the truth. One new book for a hidden pack of cigarettes, a trip out to eat for your 12-pack of liquor. But I was too young. Too naive to realize that my world that you built was slowing falling apart, crumbling down around me, and I was in your path of destruction.
Years later I would come to realize the reason for your lies. You never wanted me. I was the disappointment with a big red FAILURE painted on my forehead. You wanted a boy. Never a girl, and twin girls at that. This was the reason you pushed me to do baseball, have all boy friends. I was the girl you never wanted, so you tried to change me. And I let you. That was the biggest mistake of my life.
I will never get back the life I had before, one free of panic attacks, social anxiety, nightmares (on the good nights), and self esteem lower that the waist bands of some boys’ pants. You wanted to change me, and oh, did you! You ******* me up for life. So I hope you are proud of yourself. You transformed a little girl who worshipped the ground you walked on into a depressed and emotionally compromised teen. You took my dreams and you ran them over with that truck that you cared so much more about than me.
There should be no reason for me to fear whenever someone talks to me, touches me, or goes in for a hug. I should not fear high-fives or fist-bumps. And yet, here I am, scared to death of what that person is going to do to hurt me. I would like to thank you for taking that trust away from me.
So before you start to make a false past about someone again, think about what you did to me. I was your daughter, you my father. Now you are just a distant memory of a lost childhood and a nightmare of my life. You are not my father. You are the man who gave me life, and then took it away just as fast.
