A LETTER

All My Fathers Sins

The Kind of Man You Are

Dear Dad,

A friend request on Facebook isn’t exactly how I imagined you trying to reach out after all these years. I guess a part of me assumed that with you having two other daughters, it was probably just easier for you to bury it and pretend I never existed, or tell yourself that I was a strung-out addict like my mother or some other story that made it easy to bury me.

I don’t know the kind of man you are. I only know the kind of man you were. I hope you’ve healed those parts and changed, and I hope it’s the deep down in your soul kind of change and not the walk the line because I have to kind of change. I hope for the sake of the sisters I’ve never met that you killed those demons inside of you. I hope you are healthy and happy, and that you are trying to reconcile for the sake of righting the wrongs of those demons you’ve long laid to rest; and not because you are a dying man wishing to clear his conscious.

Whatever it is that motivates you now, I want you to know that I forgave you a long time ago. So if it’s forgiveness you seek, please know you already have it. I only ever wanted to understand it. The why behind it…was it drugs or sadness or trauma of your own… and the little girl in me that looked up to and loved her father, just wanted an acknowledgment of it and an apology for it. That was it, I never wanted to hurt you, retaliate against you, or put you in jail or whatever other thing you may have imagined. Healing is all I ever wanted, and maybe a father’s love that wasn’t tainted by such things.

But I also understood that my need for those things, required you to look at the parts of yourself that you weren’t yet ready to come to terms with; and that it was simply too much of an ask, for the man you were.

I know you as the first man who stole my innocence. As the first man to tell me he loved me while hurting me in ways my young mind couldn’t comprehend. I remember the recoil I felt in my bones when you would touch me and try to pull me close to you in bed at night. I remember sitting on the toilet for hours as I tried to avoid crawling back in bed with you. I remember the pain I felt as you took from me what was never yours to take.

I also remember you threatening to kill me years later when I told everyone what you had done. And when I tried to call you to make sense of it and forgive you, I remember you telling me that “bad things had happened to you in prison, but I didn’t see you whining about it” as if that was supposed to make me o.k. with what you had done to me.

That’s the kind of man I knew you to be.

So tell me what kind of man are you today?

Are you still the kind of man who seeks to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened? Because if so, you’ve come to the wrong place. Are you the kind of man who can own his mistakes, apologize, and genuinely try to right his wrongs and know his daughter, if so, then I can tell you that a daughter's love is that big.

Or are you the kind of man, who only needs to clear his conscious before death, because if that’s the case it isn’t me you need to talk to, but God. God knows the truth of our hearts and if that’s truly the case for yours, then I’m sure you’ve probably already been absolved.

Are you the kind of man who is just curious about his daughter? If so I can tell you, that I don’t carry the same demons you and my mother do. That I am a fighter, that I am strong and smart, and that I learned to navigate the world alone.

I can also tell you that there have been times I have wished for a good father and mother. For the kind of Dad I could call and ask for advice, or lean my head against when times were hard. But I’ve had to learn to walk through life without those things and those gaps have never really been filled no matter my effort too. I can tell you that for all of these things, I have become someone who no longer needs anyone.

I can tell you that I’ve lived a lot of life in my short years on this planet, that I’ve endured a lot of pain, overcome and achieved things most have only ever dreamt of, and that I gambled it all on love and lost, and rebuilt myself more times than I can count, and that I would do it all again.

I can tell you that no matter how dark things get sometimes life is beautiful and that I am grateful for all of it, the good the bad, and the ugly, because all of it has made me who I am today, and while I am still a work in progress, that I am happy with who I have become.

But in all of this, I can also tell you that a fathers curiosity about his daughter isn’t enough to bridge the distance between you and I.

So tell me, father, what kind of man are you and what is it you seek from me now after all of these years?

Thank you for reading and supporting my work. I am grateful for this space to share these parts of myself and my journey with you all.

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