I was... I am a loving father.
And today, like every day, I miss my daughter terribly.
Dreams haunt me. They tear through sleep and follow me into waking, flooding every thought, every heartbeat, from the moment my eyes open.
Sometimes I feel I can’t go on.
Sometimes I can’t bear the sound of my own mind, screaming the same injustices again and again, to no avail.
Take a man’s daughter, and you may as well finish him with a bullet.
Because the head left behind will do the rest.
It will torment him, grind him down, and break him into a shadow of who he once was.
“Stand strong. Carry on.”
That’s all that’s left.
That’s all I’ve done.
On the outside I am strong and unwavering, but inside there is nothing left.
No reason. No peace.
Only the instinct to survive what no father should ever have to endure.
Jul 4, 2018
Jul 4, 2018 at 1:47 AM UTC
I was... I am a loving father.
And today, like every day, I miss my daughter terribly.
Dreams haunt me. They tear through sleep and follow me into waking, flooding every thought, every heartbeat, from the moment my eyes open.
Sometimes I feel I can’t go on.
Sometimes I can’t bear the sound of my own mind, screaming the same injustices again and again, to no avail.
Take a man’s daughter, and you may as well finish him with a bullet.
Because the head left behind will do the rest.
It will torment him, grind him down, and break him into a shadow of who he once was.
“Stand strong. Carry on.”
That’s all that’s left.
That’s all I’ve done.
On the outside I am strong and unwavering, but inside there is nothing left.
No reason. No peace.
Only the instinct to survive what no father should ever have to endure.
This is something I wrote many years ago in 2018 but never published. My life has changed a great deal since then. I spent years fighting to be reunited with my child, so these words no longer reflect my present life, yet revisiting the pain I felt then has deeply affected how I see things now.
