I'm sure at this point, I'm not even a thought in the furthest part of your brain.
But, if you do think about me, its probably to remind my little sisters of the good times we all had, so they don't remember the bad ones that tore up our precious lives and ruined our "family". I say "family" because we weren't ever family to you. No amount of blood, genes, DNA, or time would ever convince you that you shouldn't treat your family the way you did. Choose an entire different family over the one you helped make. In the end, all that mattered was that your actions and the things you said to us, showed that you were done being our "dad".
Your new goal in life was to make ours miserable, and whether that was subconscious or not is irrelevant based on the fact you decided to retaliate against your own family. What makes it even worse, is that grown adults sat down, took the time and thought about whether they were going to do something about a man abusing his wife and children, or support his side of the story. Unfortunately for us, your children, those people chose to support you and for that, we have had to endure countless therapists who didn't bother to believe what we said. Because apparently PTSD, suicide attempts, and anxiety isn't enough to believe that someone has been physically, mentally, and emotionally abused.
So, I thank you, for doing all of the things you did to us for so many years because it has undoubtedly made us stronger people. Yes, some of us have been hit hard with anxiety and panic attacks but that doesn't mean we haven't gotten through them. We've pushed and fought and struggled to not let what happened take over our lives. It has altered our lives, at first for the worst, but now for the better.
We're not living in fear anymore, scared that one of us wouldn't wake up in the morning. We're not crying ourselves to sleep anymore, unless it's about one of our siblings stealing our Ale House leftovers from the fridge. We're not worried about who's going to get the worst of the fighting when we get home anymore, and we now, thankfully, don't have to dread coming home from school in fear that one of us will be hurt.
Because of you, we now know what to look out for when it comes to significant others, or even friends. Somebody who isn't a toxic person, or will use our words against us. Somebody who cares enough to not turn people against us, in the brunt of an argument. Somebody we won't have to make extreme sacrifices for in order to keep them happy, or to not make our life a living hell.
The only thing we will ever thank you for, is exactly that. Indirectly showing us what to look out for in people. You always knew what you were doing to us, but the one thing you didn't know was that you were making the quote "girls marry men like their dad" the biggest lie of our lives.
Through out all the years, the only one you have to blame is yourself. Because now we're all growing up, me with 2 1/2 years of high school left, and yet, you've missed out on all of it. You've missed my 15th birthday, getting my permit, lettering in academics, finishing with the highest grade in a biochemistry class from Harvard, having the highest math and English grade in the entire freshman class. You've missed me just growing up. Me choosing colleges. Me falling in love with Boston. You've missed everything, and you will continue to miss everything because you'll never be let back in my life.
It took a lot for me to finally stand up to you and decide to push you out of my life, and now that I have, I'll be darned if I let you come back and ruin everything I have worked for.
