What do you say to the girl who doesn't have a father? "I'm sorry"? "You poor thing"? "Oh." No, you don't say any of those things, because the one thing the girl wants to hear isn't something you can tell them. It's hard for them to see other girls their age run around with their fathers; they can't simply process that they don't have one.
My whole life, since the moment I remember, I have never had a father -- no one to teach me to ride a bike, no one to teach me how to play baseball, no one. A father is supposed to do all those things and more, love me unconditionally, chase the boys away. But for some odd reason you never did any of those things. I was six months old when you left in your car and only looked back a handful of times -- times I could count on my little five-year-old fingers. A five year old shouldn't have to realized that her father never cared for her like her friends' fathers did -- the very same friends who day after day and year after year told stories about how their fathers loved them, while I had to hold back tears because again, I couldn't understand why I only had a mother who loved me.
It wasn't only mom who loved me like two parents should; no, I had my grandfather but while he did so much for me; he couldn't do the things, be there, like a father should.
Like you should've done.
What were you doing for the three years mom had to watch me have close to 200 seizures a day? Did you even care that I could die? Or that I had a high possibly of not being able to function? Three years, from six months old to three years old, you could have held me while the doctors tried to figure out why I was having so many seizures?
Nope -- again, mom did that.
I was in 7th grade when I finally realized that you would never be there to welcome me home. You would never dry my tears, nor care to, as I cried night after night. Do you know who showed me the way to finally sever almost all ties to you? Miley Cyrus, but you wouldn't know because you never came to court that day. You never heard the heartbreaking letter that I wrote the judge, but I had, until the moment of truth, held out hope that you would come to fight me.
You didn't.
I'm not the same five-year-old who was terrifed of you when you came to see us that handful of times. I'm not the same 13-year-old who held out hope that her father would stop her from changing her name. Most of all, I am not the same person who wished night after night that her father would come home to her.
I am a different girl, a 21-year-old who sees that her mother is both parents to her, who sees that she had a father, in her grandfather. You shaped my life in more ways than one, but I'm glad that the ways that you shaped me weren't important.
I only have one question that will haunt me for the rest of my life: why did you leave? However, that question doesn't hold the same power as it once did over me. Not anymore.
