You Hit Me and it Felt Like Love

Pay up, bitch.

This is not a story of a specific event that took place. More of an open letter to my father, but it is relevant to the story.

"All she knows is pain. All she feels is desperation. She tries to cry out for help, but soon learns that no one will listen." — Margaret Smith, Ritual Abuse: What it is, Why it Happens, and How to Help.

My dad shot someone. You know, like bang, bang, you're dead, kind of shot someone. He didn't kill the guy, but he still pulled the trigger on the cashier of a gas station because he wanted money for drugs. I was a toddler, it happened sometime before he left so I guess that I was two or younger. He went up and down the coast robbing hospitals. One time he even cut open his own head with a knife so he could pretend he got jumped instead of admitting to my mom he spent all of his money on drugs. Really, what doctor— or cop is gonna by the story, "Yea. Some jogger stopped and asked me for a smoke and then jumped me."

Yea, a few things wrong with this sentence, daddy-o.

jogger
Smoke
Jogger asking you for a smoke

I mean, seriously, what jogger is going to take the time to exercise their body if they're only going to pollute it with smoke? And I highly doubt a smoker would have the stamina to jog if they were smokers.

You disappeared on my second birthday. We were with your family, my grandparents and your son, my older half brother. Mom says I never asked for you but I woke up at three in the morning that night crying for you, but you were gone and so was your parents car, and you came home in the middle of the day with a box of donuts saying you bought donuts for my birthday. Story goes, you were high off your ass. Out of your mind. So doped up that you couldn't speak right.

That's the last time I saw you. Mom said she couldn't do it anymore, she took me and left, and you didn't try and stop her. At one point you did, but it was only to steal her checks and ruin her life a little bit more. Then you tried to come around again when you were in prison, writing letters and begging my mom for another chance. When you got out though, you never called, never came to see me. I blame you because if you hadn't been a drug addict and an awful person then maybe I would have had a dad and a step dad who didn't beat me, and a mom who didn't want to kill herself all of the time.

Your parents, my grandparents, they're dicks by the way. They told my mom they didn't like her and didn't want my brother knowing me, so they took him and I haven't seen him in almost 18 years, right along with you. There's a child support order out there, and you haven't paid a cent so guess what daddy, you owe me seventy-thousand big old bucks.

I don't hate you, although I may be able to if I really tried. I never saw the point in hating somebody who wasn't interested in giving me the time of day. When you have a child, that child becomes your responsibility, but you would know that wouldn't you? Because you've had two more daughters who you love so much that you got their names burned into your arms. You're wife, a perfect fit, a lovely drug addict as well who loves drugs just as much as you do. Don't be mistaken by my spiteful and condescending tone, I am happy for your new family. You could not love me but found a way to love them and that is incredible for you. They will have a father, and I hope that you have found yourself sober. For their sake. And I hope you love your girlfriend (or wife maybe, I don't really know) the ways that you couldn't love my mom.

It stings a little bit that you chose them and not me. Not that I am an object to be chosen, or thing to be bought, toy to be owned, but I was once a child who only wanted love. Because of you and your choices I will never have a father a first date will be nervous to meet. I will never know what a fathers love feels like, and although marriage has been ruined for me, I will never have a father to walk me down the aisle.

I reached out to you this year, it's only taken me nearly 18 of them. I told you that I wanted nothing from you, that I am doing well and have been perfectly fine without you in my life. You replied to me shortly after, and I will never answer you because I do not want conversation. I do not want to speak to you and I do not want to know you, I just wanted to make you think that you abandoning me did nothing to me, but it did. I'd be a fool to deny it.

You told me that you forgave yourself for leaving me because you knew I would be fine with my mother. She would never let anything happen to me and she loved me so much. I do not doubt that she loves me, even though she does not know how to show it, but she did let someone hurt me.

So I do blame you.
But I forgive you as well.
Because there is no point in chasing resentment of a shadow.