dear father

when i was six years old i used to play doctor on you
with the medical kit the doctors gave me acclimate me to being in hospitals all the time
now i'm 21 years old and you're laying in a real hospital, dying
leaving me again
you used to be someone i looked up to
but you took that person away from me when you raised that bottle to your lips
when you raised your voice to me and said things a father should never say to a daughter
things no one should ever say to anybody

when i was 16 we kicked you out of the house
and you left us with a pile of rubble to build into a life
and my heart and soul and brain are full of shrapnel
the bits and pieces, sharp and biting are shaped like words
they are are shaped like 'fat' and '****' and 'stupid' and 'never amount to anything' and 'no better than me'

when i was 16 you made a choice
you made a choice that hating yourself and getting drunk was more important then your family
more important than me
i've never heard anything so ******* pathetic in my entire life
than to never have the ***** to get better for the people who love you

when i was 19 my mother got sick
and you dealt with it like you deal with anything
you got drunk and made our lives miserable from hundreds of miles away
even then everything was about you
everything is always about you; your problems your ****** childhood how terrible you think you are how awful this makes you feel

**** your problems
you had 53 years to deal with your problems and you didn't
and now everyone else has to deal with the aftermath
like an island full of land mines so no one knows where to step
you took your problems and used them to abuse everyone else and never took responsibility
and you never will because dead men can't take responsibility for anything

did you really need to take one last thing from me?
you took my childhood and tore it to pieces
you shattered my self esteem, destroyed my sense of worth
you took the person i called my dad away from me
and now before i have a chance to come to terms with all the things you did
you drink yourself to death

i can't confront you about the things you did
it won't mean anything when you don't even know what day it is
do you even remember speaking to me the other day
do you remember i'm still mad
do you even remember all the awful things you did to me

call me spiteful but i'm angry you won't have to live a long life remembering the way you abused me
while i am forced to remember it every day
every time i look in a mirror
every time i cry about something that 'doesn't matter'
every time something is just a little too loud

how come you get to ruin your brain and ruin your body and die and forget everything
and i have to live every day remembering
how is that fair
how come you get to make yourself the victim when i'm the one fighting to survive

how dare you
how ******* dare you
the audacity it took to do all those things to me, and then drink until you forgot them, and then drink until it destroyed you
one more awful thing on a long list of slights you and alcohol have enacted against me
couldn't you have at least not done this now
tracy died three years ago the sixth
how could you ******* do this to us
especially to mom
weren't you supposed to love her?
are you even sorry?

how am i supposed to mourn someone i haven't had the time to forgive
how am i supposed to mourn someone who died a long time ago as far as i'm concerned
how am i supposed to feel when you're dying and taking all my options away from me
one last time

there is no excuse for the things you did to me
there never were and there never will be
and i will probably never forgive you for them
and now i will never forgive you for dying before i had a chance to heal
and for taking any chance i had to tell you how much you hurt me away from me

i will try to mourn the man who drew dots on softballs so i could see them better
and let me draw on his back and put bows in his hair
but it's hard to mourn someone you buried more than five years ago
i had to tell myself the old you was dead to keep myself alive
i don't know what a difference your real death will make in that endeavor

how is that even half dead and hundreds of miles away
you're still ruining my ******* life
and hurting my feelings
i would feel better about your death if i knew it would take away your voice in my head
but i know that it won't

if you ever get better i hope it's with the knowledge of all the pain you made me suffer
i hope you know what you did
at least then both of us our miserable

i told you i loved you when i talked to you on the phone but i can't sign this letter with a lie,
your daughter