trying.

[ 4 ]

there was a time when i awoke to a smile on my face. a time when i was the smallest and most optimistic person in the room, but things came to a crumbling end when everything began to add up.

my father hated me. he never said he did, but the first time i told him how much he meant to me, he clearly had disappoint in his red eyes.

the way he looked at us, at his mistakes, he would set us all on fire with the anger falling from his tongue. slamming objects, cussing words my mother hated; he made everything seem as though it was normal for a father to act like this.

i grew up thinking a father was the equivalent of satan himself.

that's until i began school. little girls with high pigtails and pink skirts drew pictures and wrote lovely letters to their dad's on father's day. they sat at the edge of their seat, cheering about how much their father's were going to love their present or how they were going on a daughter-daddy date right after school.

they trusted their father to protect them. they knew their dad loved them.

at the age of six, i knew my father hated me.