The Broken Child

I try so hard to forget but every so often it crosses my mind.  Why couldn't you be there for me like u were for my other siblings? How could you just up and leave and not care? I try so hard to act like I don't care but I do and it hurts. Sometimes I wish you never came back into my life, maybe that would make things easier and I wouldn't care so much. I'm 20 and now u want to be that "father figure" but I feel like it's too late. I feel like I have nothing to learn from you and you can't tell me nothing that I don't already know or learned from someone else. As a child you caused me a lot of pain. I always wondered where you were at and how come you never showed up when you said you were coming to see me. I cried and cried to my mom because I just couldn't understand why you had to lie and make so many broken promises. My mom played her role but how come you couldn't play yours. These questions still linger in the back of mind just like they did when I was a child. I'll probably never get the truthful answers to these questions and we'll probably never have that father daughter relationship that I always wanted to have with you. For years I blamed myself and thought maybe I wasn't good enough but I've come to realize that it's your lost not mine. When you sit on the phone and down me for wanting to get an education that just pushes me to do better. How could you sit there and tell me my education isn't sh** and common sense is everything, common sense didn't get you too far now did it? I can't thank you for a lot of things but I can Thank you for this...Thank You Dad for showing me how I don't want my future husband or sons to be. Thank You for all the nasty remarks about me wanting to get an education, it only pushes me to do better and reach higher & Thank You for showing me how a man shouldn't treat me. Every night I ask God to relieve my heart of all the anger I have towards you and give me strength to forgive you. I have respect for you because I was brought up to have respect for my elders no matter what they did said or how they treated me. Like my mom & grandma always said "At the end of the day he's still your dad." which is true and I'll show respect but one thing I can say is I'll never love you because I don't know you and truthfully I don't feel like you really know me either. Hopefully one day soon I'll be able to forgive you but I don't think I'll ever forget.

                 Signed, The Daughter Who Didn't Count