Dear Birth Father
Here are the facts: I don’t hate you. I don’t know that I love you, but I don’t hate you. You get no credit for making me the person I am. None of my success is owed to you and I don’t plan to falsely give you that satisfaction that some how your negativity pushed me to be who I am. I am more like you than I like to admit or that I will ever fully admit. In other ways, I am no where near the person you are and for that I am thankful.
I fully believe that there are two sides to every story. Everyone feels differently, that’s what makes us all unique. That also is what makes communication completely impossible sometimes. So Birth Father, here is my side of our long but brief history:
We all know who you were and who you still probably are. Whether you know how to control your emotions are not the facts are, you don’t. I’ve never known if this is purely your choice, purely the way you were raised, or a good combination of the two, but regardless at 48 years old, you have to start taking responsibility for your actions. And in case you didn’t know, speaking is an action.
For starters, we both know my childhood was an absolute hurricane of inconsistent chaos. And then 13 hit and suddenly it made sense, everything you were doing and choosing over me was not a battle I wanted to fight for the rest of my life. At 13, I made the decision that my life would make more sense if I left my relationship with you right there were it was. I saw my step father (at the time, now the only dad that I will ever give recognition for building me into the woman that I am becoming) pick me daily. Pick someone who was not his child and treat her like that was never the case, like he had been at the hospital the day I was born and never left. He learned me, he erased my doubts and fears of him being anything like you. I saw a family not fighting. A family who wasn’t arguing over me. A family that didn’t judge my every move as an annoying preteen because they wanted me to know that regardless of my flaws and where we were that I was loved and wanted, and then I saw you, the complete opposite of everything he was striving to be. How could I afford to not walk away when I was at a time that was detrimental to shaping some of the characteristics I would own for the rest of my life.
10 years later, you got a second chance. Circumstances given, I still pushed through the past to get to you. One week was all it took for me to think that maybe you really were changing and realized your mistakes, and it took you 2 seconds to make sure that I looked like that same child thrown in to that hurricane of complete chaos. You made sure to write me a message that made it seem like I had a decision to make. You made sure to make it seem like it was all my decision and in that moment our entire past made sense. Although I was the one who walked away, you let me go. Easily I might add and here we sit, not even 3 miles apart, with two different families, two different accounts of what happened and with two different stories that will never intertwine.
I’m not sure what the future holds for me, but right now I’m okay with that. I don’t give you credit for anything. You didn’t make me stronger, you made me weaker and I think that’s the beauty of this whole situation. I know that you did nothing, and I pushed my self to do it all without you, and I will remain without you and that decision was all yours.
Please always remember that.
Love,
Your beautifully broken birth daughter.