August 31st, 2012

I thought I didn't love him.
I thought that ruining my life and breaking my heart would make me hate him forever
Then I see the look in my brother's eyes.
The sadness from seeing the life of your father ebb away in your arms.
Today marks the one year anniversary of a day that will forever be inscribed in our minds.
A man who I knew as the only father who told me he loved me.
A man who called me a princess and at times treated me like one.
A man that I grew to respect, his word became law and his eyes could be kind.
The fights came and took over
Like a fire they burned down whatever forest we had left.
His words cut through tendons and flesh and straight to our hearts.
I wasn't good enough
Not important enough
I was one of four daughters.
My brother the only son.
I love my dad.
I loved the way that he could make me laugh no matter what he said
I loved the way that he held me when I needed to go to sleep.
He comforted me.
He taught me about anything that I wanted to know.
He tried his best to give me everything that I wanted.
At times I disrespected him
I went against his orders
I called him names
I called his older cars trash and was embarrassed to see myself in them.
My friends would come over, I would limit any exposure they had to him.
It hurt him a lot.
It hurt him even more when we moved away and I cut off any contact I had.
I cut off any life we could have had.
My dad became invisible, nonexistant.
A ghost that came back to haunt us with missed payments and bad memories.
Three years passed, my dad's health was failing.
I knew he wasn't going to last much longer.
I pretended it didn't hurt.
Only my stepdad after all.
The one who raised me and claimed me as his own.
What did it matter to me if he were dying?
If his body was getting too old to take care of itself?
I saw the toll it took on my brother.
Taking care of his dad and having to deal with things no child should deal with.
Still he pushed on.
My baby brother had more courage than I did.
He had more faith in a man that had hurt us more than once.
My baby brother had more love in a man who messed with our feelings for more than 10 years.
It came to the point where Daddy couldn't move any more.
He had guard rails everywhere and the house was a wreck
My childhood home.
Where my knees got scraped on our gravel driveway.
Where our wagon flipped over and gave my brother a scar on his forehead
Where we had over 10 dogs and named each and every single one of them
where we woke up to a rooster and fell asleep to the crickets
The place that showed us a sign of belonging somewhere in this twisted world
That childhood home had two meanings however.
The other was the home that became my mother's prison.
Where she wasn't allowed to do anything without permission
Where she and my father fought about everything.
Saying words that shouldn't be said
Thinking thoughts that shouldn't have been thought
And in my father's case, talking to other women that were not my mother.
That house was like a safe haven in the middle of a battlefield.
Like a dungeon that was part of a castle in a sky
My room was the only place where I could curl up in a corner, put my hands over my ears, and try to drown out the bullets and the pain.
This house represents now the place that my dad took his final breath
When my brother held him in his arms.
My baby brother resuscitated my dad several times before life was taken away for the last time.
His last few breaths were taken in my baby brother's arms
and still my brother didn't give up.
I thought I hated this man.
But the moment I got that call.
My heart froze.
This man had loved me for over half my life.
and I thought I hated him.
But that day that he died.
I haven't cried so much in my life.
Friends comforted me but NONE of them knew how I felt.
To have completely missed out on an opportunity to love a family member that made so many mistakes
To have missed out on the fact that I have only had one true father, and my stepdad was it.
My friends tried but none understood my mistake.
I hated a person that only ever loved me.
To this very day I put up this mask.
"I don't care"
"Whatever"
" He was nothing to me"
When in reality, I think about him every day
He had his faults, many of them.
He treated us like crap
Be what he was, he was my father.
And today marks the one year anniversary of when he closed his eyes and never awoke again.
Today marks the day that I failed at the mission that God had put me up to. To change this man's life.
I can't stop thinking of all the regrets that I have.
Of disrespecting and ignoring my "other life"
Of disgust and of un-forgiveness.
I just feel so held back all the time.
From the same feelings of anger and of asking the question: "Why?"
My first step is remembering the good times and forgiving him for all the bad ones.
I love you Daddy.