Dramatic daddy issues

How many tears do you want? Hours of sleepless nights? Hoarse voices and shaking hands? Raised adrenaline and fearful eyes?

How many?

What will it take for you to stop hurting me? When will you permanently realize you have caused me pain? When will you say sorry, genuinely sorry? 

I don’t think it was the fourteen year old at fault when we screamed at each other in the car. I think she was learning to be a person for the first time, and you blamed a child for your unhealed trauma.

You grew up quickly and shouldn’t have had to. But neither should I. Could you have done anything differently? Listened more closely? Or were you always destined not to heal. Was it so impossible to reach this realization earlier? I think I had enough character development growing up.

Fuck character building, a sad excuse for the cruelty we subject children to, or the pathetic excuse we run to when there has to be a silver lining. Maybe some things were just wrong. Some things were just bad and we deserve to be mad about them. I deserve to be mad about them. 

I deserve to be mad because I’m scared of you. I deserve to be mad because I’m always the protector. Who protects me? I don’t know, it was supposed to be you. I make the plans, I cook the food, I hold us together and you don’t know where the pots in our kitchen go.

It feels like grief. This is what I told the guy on the hotline when he asked what it felt like knowing we aren’t going to have the relationship we should. I know you aren’t dead. I don’t wish you dead, I never would. Sometimes I wish me dead.

Do we get past this? Do you come to your senses after a particularly enlightening counseling session, run to me and apologize and say “I know you have no reason to believe me after all the pain I’ve caused, and it was never fair to you, but if its not too late I want to be a dad to you while I can”

I used to think so.