Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

Today is Father’s Day.

A day that I used to celebrate. A day that was exciting and happy but now only brings pain.

Last year, I, of course, was not going to reach out to you, not after everything you did, but this year it is my choice not to speak to you and I know that you will never understand how much this hurts me.

I know that you think I am a bitter, unforgiving person and truthfully, I don’t blame you for thinking that. That’s how your family taught you to respond. That was your only example and what you experienced, so it is only natural that you would think that I am the same, but I’m not.

You don’t know that I still cry over that night just over a year ago.You don’t know that this morning, while people worldwide celebrated their fathers, that I made breakfast for mom and me, and together we cried over our meal. You don’t know that some days will be so happy and yet, the smallest thing can remind me of you and there the tears will fall. You don’t know the sheer strength it takes to hide this part from my every day life and to keep facing the day as if my life didn’t crumble to pieces all that time ago. You don’t know what it’s taken this past year to get myself to where I am today. You don’t know the effort of overcoming the heartbreaking rejection I’ve carried as a result of your words and actions or how it affected even the most mediocre and superficial of relationships as I became frozen with fear that they’d do the same.

My heart didn’t just break, it was shattered. I felt like my life ended that night. Ironic isn’t it – a night that you wrote off, felt like it wrote me off. A night that you claim no responsibility for, was responsible for making me feel like I wanted to die, for making me feel like I did die.

And yet, you won’t know any of this. I have been angry, very angry actually. Rightfully angry, but not for a long time, and not today. I don’t hate you, although sometimes I think things would have been easier if I did. I may not speak to you, but I miss you, I pity you, I worry about you and I pray for you.

I am not bitter. I don’t run you down in front of others. I don’t tell lies about you. I don’t try and get people on my ‘side’. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.

I forgive you. I understand you more than you maybe realise. I understand why you are the way that you are, and why you have been this way for years. But it is this understanding that has me keeping my distance regardless of the forgiveness my heart has learned to offer.

Happy Father’s Day, I guess.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, know that you are loved, albeit from a safe distance.