Dear Dad,

I'm growing up and I know that scares you a little, because you want to be able to protect me from anything bad that may come into my life. As I drive off with friends or text you at ten saying I might be a few minutes late, you realize I'm not so little anymore. You realize that your daughter is finding her way through the world and you can no longer guide her to making the right choices.

But before I go off and see the world I wanted to thank you for being my best friend. There are girls in this world that are lucky enough to have a spectacular father figure but none are quite as lucky as me. When we would drive in your truck on spring Saturday mornings to baseball games and spend summer nights on the beach watching the sun kiss the sea. You taught me how to throw a ball and then how to throw it well, you taught me how to be independent and then that you need people in life, the right people.

Underdogs on the swings at school before your back got bad, throwing the football around all day on the beach until your shoulder got bad, reading me books before I went to sleep before your eyes got bad, and I learned how to read. I'm sorry about all the times I made you feel like a bad parent, because you're not. I'm sorry for smushing vaseline into your chair when I was little. I'm sorry for worrying the heck out of you sometimes.

I would't want to imagine a world without you as my dad, or my best friend. I can't imagine going a day without hearing you say I love you. I don't want a world where you're not in it, cause you're the reason I wake up in the morning. Because most of the time I forget to set my alarm and you have to come wake me up.

I have so many memories of you making me laugh, and making me forget about all the troubles and hate in the world. You made me believe that for a moment, just a moment, everything can be perfect. I want to go back sometimes to when everything was simple, and easy. Back to when the world was still flat in my mind and the moon followed you in the car. Back to when you protected me from the mean girls and the overwhelming feeling of defeat when I put too much pressure on myself.

Back to when I didn't feel the need to fix the world, because there was nothing to fix..

Thank you for fighting of the pain and hatred that the world brings to our door for me. But it's my turn to try and fix the world, to find the broken pieces and rearrange them to make something beautiful. And I ask you to remember that when you mess with things that are broken often you get a cut or two along the way. But I promise you, with everything that I am. I will be okay.

I ask you to believe in me as you always have and trust that what you have taught be about being a good person will carry me through. That the kindness and love that you and mom instilled upon me will radiate through into the people in my life. I promise to always be the girl that you raised me to be, I promise to work harder than the man next to me and I promise to love deeply and unconditionally, just as you have taught me.

So dad, padre, best friend, mejor amigo, thank you for making me into the person that I am. And for showing me what i should aspire to be. There will never be a man I love more in this world than you.

Love,

Your daughter.