Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

It’s Father’s Day again. I stare at the bright card display in Walgreen’s, the conveniently placed gift cards for Lowes and Cabela’s enticing me to reach for them. I pick up a card. Open it. “Thanks for being the best dad ever” it reads in a bold font. I want to buy it. I want more than anything to buy it. To mean it. But it would be a lie.

I wish I could tell of the times we played ball in the yard. I wish I could tell about all the times we watched a movie, making popcorn together and ending up throwing it at each other and giggling innocently when mom came in the room. I wish I could say the times we went fishing together or did anything fun were the building blocks of my childhood, moments that I hold onto in the very reaches of my heart. I wish I could say that your love was the best thing in the world, that you always made me feel special, made me feel like I mattered. But I can’t.

Instead, I can only tell of how I hid when I heard your footsteps, of how I locked my door in three places, of how I had memorized the feel of your belt and sometimes felt it in my dreams. I can tell how you made me feel like the trash you left on the floor after passing out in a chair, of the bruises, of the screams, of the nights I wanted to die.

I can talk about how I still startle if I hear a low gravelly voice, of how the smell of a Marlboro makes me shake uncontrollably, of how I can’t wear a belt with my favorite green pants even though they keep falling down.

Sometimes I pretend that you were a real father, that you cared about me. I lay on the bed and imagine walking through the woods with you, looking for birds and telling cheesy jokes. Sometimes I tell people I meet that you were an FBI agent and died a hero, serving our country. Sometimes I pretend that you were in the military and had seen terrible things, things that would make it easier to explain your behavior. I think I could understand a little better in that case.

Sometimes I wish I could see you, that I could ask you why, why did you hate me. But I can’t. So I just wonder.

But while I wonder, I smile at people. I tell them how amazing they are, and I mean it. I hug my friends extra tightly and ask how they’re really doing. I listen to them, and I say I love you. I tell cheesy dad jokes and laugh at them even if they aren’t very funny. I watch the sunsets and take way to many pictures of the people I care about and every day a little fear slips away. Every day you are a little more faded. And every day I’m a little happier. And I can love a little more.

I think I’m becoming everything that I wanted you to be.

So thank you. Thank you for giving me an unrelenting desire to never make anyone feel less than they are. Thank you for giving me the desire to love someone for who they are and not for simply what they can do. Thank you for showing me how not to live. Thank you for ruining my life so that I could build a life a real father might be proud of. So even though you tore my heart apart and shattered it into a million pieces,

Thank you.

Your daughter