For twenty-one years you swore to protect your country.
Twenty-one years you defended this land with all your might.
Twenty-one years you swore to lay down your life if it meant protecting the citizens in your country.
For twenty-one years you swore to make this country safe.
For twenty-one years you fought for this country.
Why did you never fight for me? What is it about me that you hate so much? Why was I never enough for you? WHY?
I was never safe around you. I was a child. I needed a father. WHERE WERE YOU?
You told me that I was a fussy baby, so you would sing to me and put my foot on the wall, and was the only way I would stop crying.
You tell me stories that when you returned to America after your deployment to Qatar that I never let go of your hand. That as soon as I saw you I always had to hold your hand if you weren’t holding me in your arms.
You would draw me pictures of Dumbo and Bolt because you knew how much I loved those movies, and how I loved even more when we sat at the table and colored together.
We went to the Military Father-Daughter dance seven years in a row. You would take me and my brother canoeing and long bike rides. We watched Disney movies together.
When you finally returned from a TDY I would tell everyone at school “My daddy is home!” and I ran home to give you the biggest hug.
I genuinely thought you loved me. I never know why you stopped loving me.
But I remember clearly the day I stopped loving you.
October 4th, 2014.
I don’t know how it started. I remember mom calling me a brat. I remember sobbing in the basement as you threatened to kill your autistic son for simply looking at you. I remember you wrapping your hands around him as I fled out the door. The door didn’t even shut. I never ran so fast before in my life. I never screamed so loudly. I didn’t know it was possible to cry this much, to feel this terrified for your own life. I hate myself for letting you touch him. I should have stayed. I should have protected him. There was no such thing as safe anymore.
Before I made it out of the neighborhood I saw your car approaching me, I thought you were coming to apologize, to bring me back home, to promise you never meant what you just did and said in our basement.
But your car drove past me.
You were never coming for me, you were abandoning us. You packed up and left.
Everytime you violently lashed out, people would tell me “He didn’t mean it. He would never hurt you. He’s your father, he loves you.”
Do you threaten to kill someone and not mean it?
Is your only option to never be hurt is to barricade your bedroom door or hide behind a church so he wouldn’t find you?
Yes, he’s my father. But he doesn’t love me. I was never enough for him. I am worthless to him.
He doesn’t love me because LOVE SHOULDN’T HURT!
For twenty-one years you fought for this country.
You never fought for me.
Only against me.
And I hate you for making me love you, and then making me watch you walk away.
I wish I was never your daughter.
I wish I was never born.
