Dear Daddy

Dear Daddy,

I’ve been writing this letter in my head for 14 years now.  27 years ago in Providence Hospital, Anchorage, AK I was born to a un-wed, 17year old mother.  I spent the next 13 years watching her get beaten by men, being the victim of her drug abuse.  I spent the next 13 years wondering why you got in that car accident and why God would take away the one man that may have given me my salvation from the beatings, and the verbal abuse inflicted upon a little girl without a Daddy. When I was 13, the truth came out about your death.  No car accident…Suicide.  Single gunshot wound to the head, July of 1985 in a Phoenix, AZ hotel room.

You took away my chances at a different life. You stripped me of an escape from my pain, only to plunge me into a whole new world of deceit and trechery.  Why Daddy? Did you ever think about me? Did you love me? Did you ever want to wrap me in your arms and holds me close to your chest? Did you ever want to brush your lips against my hair and memorize my scent? Did you ever love me at all?

I have a thousand questions for you that will never be answered.  I have one picture, I waited 22 years to get from your brother, and I can’t even see your eyes.  I want to see your eyes, Daddy, I want to see the pain that had to be there in order for you to put that gun against your head and finally pull that trigger.  I want to know, that my pain isn’t pure vanity, I want to know that I have your eye lashes, and the mischevious look I get comes from you. Everyone’s always telling me that I have stunning eyes, are they yours?

I always wanted a Father, someone I thought would love me unconditionally and rescue me from my mother’s drunken tyrades of raging violence. A father to rescue me from the world, someone I could curl up with or play ball with. Someone who I could compare every man in my life to, someone to help me set a standard.  But, you fell short.  You took yourself away from me, from the world.  I’d like to say that I care about your brother, or your grandparents. I’d like to say that I care about your other daughter, Jennifer.  But she doesn’t know me, and she refuses to get to know me.  I’m not sure if I blame her or your brother, to be honest with you.  Who’d want to love someone after 27 years of never knowing them.

But if they could have rescued me from my pain…if they could have taken me away from all of it, given me a chance to really live…but you took that away from me as well.  I’m not sure who I blame more for the shit that happened in my life, my mother…or you.  Would you have stopped her from giving me away?  Would you have stopped her Daddy? Would you have even known how to make the pain go away?  Did you know I used to dream about you, make up stories about your family, how my life would be with you, your little princess? Do you see me now? Do you watch me? Or….are you rotting away in your own personal hell?

Do you know how much that frightens me? To know that even in my next life, or in the beyond, in the fields of Elysium or the Halls of Valhalla…that I’ll never get to touch your face, and see your eyes?  I don’t even know how to love you…

Forever Your little Girl