Do you remember me? Do you know who I am? If you don’t then I am your daughter, Jelissa. Don’t tell me to leave. Don’t tell me to go because I won’t. And if you try to leave and I stay behind, I won’t let you because I need to know why did you leave me when I needed you? Why did you leave when you know every child needs both their parents? Why did you drink and take medications at the same time knowing the harm it could do to you? Why would you drink period? Do you not know what drinking could do? You didn’t want me, is that it? Do you know what it feels like to have a father who drinks himself to death, leave his baby and his seven-year-old daughter? Having the baby feel like when she grows up thinking that it was her fault that her parents got a divorce? Feeling as if she wasn’t wanted that maybe you couldn’t handle being a father to a newborn again so you decided to waste your life and make yourself sick so that you wouldn’t have to deal with your small fragile innocent blood anymore. Not ever remembering you saying to me once that you love me. Because the only thing you were good at was flirting with other women, buying my favorite food and gifts. Putting yourself in front of God to have and to hold for as long as you shall live that you will love and never break this family apart. That you will be with my mother til death do you apart. But that vow was broken.

I get that you couldn’t see me anymore because you stopped showing up to the police department when you were supposed to pick me up so that we could spend the day together going to the movie theaters and eat food afterward. But you ruined that. Threatening to kidnap me and my twelve-year-old sister. Threatening to take us away from our mom who we needed and take us overseas. So that she won’t find us but not realizing that we would’ve gotten rescued and went back to my mom. And since you did that and didn’t show up like you were supposed to, the judge told you, you couldn’t see us anymore. It’s like as if they had put you in a cell once you were told you couldn’t see your children anymore. Yet you didn’t listen and you searched for us and we hid so that you couldn’t find us. This hurt, this pain, this sorrow that I feel is trapped inside me. Ever since you decided to drink yourself to death and left me. Looking for closure and now I can’t have that thanks to you because you’re gone. Long gone. Forever gone. And I have to live with that for the rest of my life not knowing how you died, why you died, and that I will never see you again. I will never be able to get to see you face to face looking for the closure that I need to ask you, to tell you how much pain you caused me, how much tears I cried for you, how sad I am, how I am in college and I’m working hard as much as I can so I can have a future. A successful future. A BRIGHT Future. But I wish you the best of luck on the other side. Even if it’s hard for me to forgive you now but still wish you the best of luck because I am that person. No matter how much you hurt me, you’re still blood. You’re still my father and I am still your Daughter.