Dear Dad,
It's me, Julian. I'm doing okay. It's senior year and I'm absolutely loving it. I just finished my last high school musical production and I'm getting closer and closer to being a full-time college student. You should know all of that, but here's the thing; you don't. After you and mom divorced, I saw you every week. Every Sunday was a Sunday worth waiting for. Another sunny Sunday at Six Flags. Another cloudy Sunday at the movies or another snowy Sunday at the park. Sunday's were our days and I'm grateful for the ones we had.
What I am not grateful for is your absence. Most kids are lucky enough to have never met their fathers. Some are fortunate enough to know them and hold them dearly until the day they die, but I was given a different situation. The one where you just stopped showing up on Sundays. The situation where you stopped calling me for every birthday. The situation that made me forget I even had a father. I remember vividly the day it all started. I was nine and it was just a week before my birthday. A Sunday. You took me and my youngest brother, Mario, out to Chuck E. Cheese's. I was so excited that I sang the theme song over and over for the whole car ride. I asked you if you had already gotten me a present. You replied, "What present?", so I assumed you were just playing dumb and moved on with the conversation. Lo and behold, the following week, I never saw a present. Instead, I heard that exact night that you were out with your new fiance at the time. I didn't bring it up again. Because at that point, it was clear that our visits would be shorter, our time spent would be less valuable, and the father I had once known was long gone.
I know now that not one bit of this is my fault, Dad, but I spent years overthinking. I spent years wondering why the children that your second wife bared were more important than my brother and I. To this day, I still ask myself why I wasn't good enough, but the truth of the matter is that you weren't good enough. You didn't have what it takes to be a father. Not a good father. Not a real father. I am an honors student with an incredible GPA, an abundance of talent and a life worth living and you have nothing to show for it. Not one appearance at an awards ceremony. Not one arrival to any of my childhood lacrosse games. I will be remembered by those around me as the kid who had obstacles and still managed to overcome, but you? You will always be remembered as the father who wasn't good enough for his children. You will always be the father who never stayed. To those without a father either, you very well may be better off. Trust me.
