understand my father

and that was all he was. he loved me the best way he knew how. it may not have always been the nicest way but it was the only way he knew how to show it. i understand why he did the things he did and why he said the things he said sometimes. he loved me but it took many years after him dying to really know that…

My father and I were close when I was a child. He was alway a big part of my life. He taught me things about the world outside the walls and he taught me how to shoot a gun and a bow. I learned about nature from him. Even after my parents divorced we found a way to understand each other through reading and movies. It wasn’t much on those weekends, but it made me happy to know he was still my dad. After he remarried though everything went wrong. He planned his wedding for a week I would be several states away. That’s how it all started. I saw my father less and less throughout high school. It was my mother who took me down to see his mother before she passed away. during college I was lucky to even get him on the phone. last year I had to go into the hospital for the first time in my life. My mother was there my father was not. He didn’t care enough to even send a card. Eveytime I am around him I start to cry. He has only one picture of me at his house and it is in the guest room, yet there are tons of pictures all over the house. He talks to me like I know who he is talking about, yet he never tells me who the people he talks about are. I havent been invited on a family outing, ever. He only takes time to see me if it is convienant for him. He hasn’t been a father to me in eleven years and I keep waiting for him to grow up enough to know that he will only ever have one daughter.

I lived at my father’s house this summer because it was closer to an internship I wanted. Before that I had only ever seen him for a day at a time here & there. I learned a lot about him in those few months- I never saw how many personality traits we shared until then- but there are still so many things I want to know about him. Maybe someday…