Dear Dad,

Happy Birthday. I look at you now, at the dinner table, smiling at your other half and how the candles glow in the darkened dining room. I watch as the fire bends before diseminating into smoke that lightly brushes my face at it dissolves into nothing. We're left in darkness and I wipe the tear that falls out of my eye.

Because do you remember the birthdays I had where you wern't there? It was just me and mom, her singing happy birthday to me alone in our house where the roof caves in and rain comes through the ceiling. The ones you couldnt make it to because you were out with your friends. The nights you stumbled home, drunk, while I watched you throw up and sway as you walked. The many times I loaded all of my bears into a trashbag wondering where me and mom and my baby sister were gonna go.

The fear when Mommy had to leave for a night and it was just you, me, and the new baby.

I feel the weight in this house as if its a thousand pounds on my shoulder. It brings me down to the ground, where I am nothing. Where I am powerless. Where you can berate me and make me choose between you and my mom. Where you drive me to tears and panic attacks. Where you try and talk my 11 year old sister into living with you.

You have been my Dad for almost 16 years, yet you have been around for the past 7. You are stll growing up, still a collage frat boy. You think the world revolves around you sometimes, and I still think you are to young in maturity for me to tell you that the world revolves around the sun. And you're not the sun.

But thats who you are. Thats who I am the daughter of. I am the daughter of confusion. The daughter of someone still growing up. I will learn to accept your personality, I will learn how to cope. I will learn how to not be scared of you.

Thank you for making me so strong. Thank you for showing me who I don't want as a signifigant other. The kind of person I don't want to be. For making me not want to be like you.

I am your strong, un-athletic, bullheaded daughter. And you will learn to accept me too.

The lights go back on in time for me to fold my hands again, look up, and smile. Because heres to another year, of your growth and my realization.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

All my love,

Madison.