Father of the Year - A letter to my Dad on Father's Day (Part 1)

Dear Dad,
I know we've had our confrontations, but this letter is way over due.
I always wanted to love you just like I see other father/daughters do. I always wanted to look at you with admiration, and to show you the respect that a father shouldn't have to earn. But what I've always wanted most of all is to feel loved by you. - To be loved and not cursed; To feel wanted and not like an embarrassment or a bother.

As a child: I never thought I deserved that kind of love from you - from God - from anyone. You would put your world on my shoulders and I would fail you every time. You accused me of tricking you - plotting, as if I were some kind of saboteur, but I was just a kid. I was your daughter.

What was I to think, when my own "daddy" hated me so much? I couldn't do anything right in your eyes. There were many times you would come around with an apology. You wanted me to forgive and forget it. But the apology turned into just another order you were placing upon me. I MUST forgive now! I MUST forget and erase it from my memory - pretend it never happened NOW,  all because you said "I'm sorry".

You wanted me to forget about what just happened that day? - the words that you said, the things you threw, the way in which you grabbed me, the hands around my neck, the anger that you still blamed me for causing you to lose control.

You came to me at night, long after I cried myself to sleep, because you wanted to forget about what had happened.

Maybe it was Mom that came to my rescue (oh how you hated when she would do that) that finally calmed you enough and was able to convince you that you'd done something wrong. Maybe you didn't want to feel the guilt anymore -The same guilt that I would feel, but that would never go away. Because your apology would get you off the hook, but not me. You always made sure that I was left with the knowledge that I still was at fault in all of this.
 I was a good girl, who wanted to make her Heavenly Father proud with obedience more than I cared about making things right with you. So I did forgive - I couldn't help it. I love my Lord, and that meant that I also would love you. But I want you to know that your apologies were only a trigger/ a spark to ignite that hunger, to be closer to God. The closer I moved toward Him, the more I inched away from you and your tyranny over my heart. Your words were empty and confusing. Because with passion spilling out, you would yell hate at me. (I bet you don't even remember these things.) Even saying that you don't love me anymore, and then come to me to say that you LIED?!? I had to wonder eventually, was this apology for me?
 Or for you?

 I would forgive, but I was careful not to forget. Because I knew, I KNEW, it would happen again. I needed to be prepared. There is a reason why they teach history in schools. The thought is that we will learn from our mistakes, or prepare for events in our future that seem unavoidable. But whether I wanted to be a naive little girl or not, I really had no choice. I was haunted by the trauma that your anger aimed at me had caused. Haunted by the memories, the words, the look on your furious face. You became the monster of my dreams.

 I know that you think that I have no right to bring all this dark of the past out into the light. But nothing really ever changed in your routine. I'm not there to upset you, so I don't have to avoid "a problem" anymore.  Like a record that skips, I know the song is scratched somewhere because it's been played many times before - so everyone just waits for it to happen. You might be thinking that you are the broken record. It's true you are broken, but so am I now.

  Mom tried many times to explain to me that you were not always this way, but there are so many scars, scrapes, and scratches between you and me. How can I attempt to see any way that you were before?  And what does it matter to me? - It just feeds the idea the idea that there is something wrong with me.
 Did I put the scratch in your record??  Did I do something to turn you the wrong away? What did I do to deserve a "daddy" like you?

 I must admit. I hate Father's Day because of you.
 They should have a Hallmark section for relationships like ours. If they did it would be called something like, "Pretend your Dad is the like the one your friend has." or "Your generic not too personal because you really don't get along at all but want to still be polite" section. Even now, especially now, when I see a dad and his girl together - the love and laughter that they so easily share between them, the closeness, the bond of trust that I witness just by viewing a moment in their life together, I get jealous. ....Sad more than jealous, a deep sadness, because not only will I never know what that's like because I can't go back in time, but also because of the deep scars that are left behind.   Your reluctance to acknowledge the negative effect of your actions on the family has paralyzed any chance of us moving forward toward something better.
 I will never know what it's like to hug my Daddy and KNOW that it's love that hugs me back.
 I don't ask for much. I know that you can't do much about your personality, but if only you were capable of loving me, unselfishly. But as long as I've been aware of you, over the years, it's been made clearer to me, you don't live within the same world we do.