Someone I wish I could communicate better with is my dad. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my dad. Who wouldn’t? I had always been a daddy’s girl from a very early age. I thought that he would hang the moon for me if he could, but he couldn’t. If I were to meet my younger self, she would be astonished at how much resentment I have towards him.
It didn’t take long after he started leaving more often that I realized I wasn’t a priority for him, but that’s not the entire reason I have rather bad feelings towards him. My issues with my dad go deeper than me, though. He’s not a good person, and I’m not the only person he’s ended up hurting over the years. I wish I could communicate with him more just so I could understand. I want to know why he thinks the way he does and what makes me so insignificant to him?
What worries me, though, is what if he’s just as insignificant to me? Obviously, he started this. He made it so I didn’t want to see him, and when I would or even still rarely go see him; it isn’t my dad. I sit in a house with some stranger that I happen to share some DNA with. The only thing is, I know that I’m at fault, too. I’m past the age that it isn’t my decision, I could go see him if I wanted, but I don’t.
I crave the communication that fathers and daughters are supposed to have, but I won’t try to communicate with him because I know that isn’t what he wants. I’m not the first, and I don’t think I’m the last of his kids either. They were all left to be raised by their single mothers — a few others getting lucky enough for a step-dad. Do those other kids and adults crave what I do? Do they want communication, understanding, or at least the peace of knowing if he’s guilty for how he’s done all of the people in his life?
I want that. I want to be able to sit and ask him if he meant for any of this to happen. I want to ask him if he planned it, if he thought it would be like this. Did he want to leave? Did he just want his own life to worry about work and money instead of a family? Was he not ready for one? If that were the case I could understand and maybe even forgive him, but I won’t know because we don’t communicate with one another.
I know it’s not all his fault, though. He was raised in a very bad environment, and had 16 other siblings. Maybe he secretly wants what I do, and just won’t do anything about it because he’s scared. Maybe he’s scared like me and just doesn’t know what to do. He’s not very emotionally available, but neither am I.
I want to communicate with him and find out if I’m going to be like him, and that is a fear nothing can shake. I was a daddy’s girl, but I don’t want to be my daddy’s girl. I don’t want people to know me for being like him. I don’t wanna be him.
(Cheyenne is a senior at Harlan County High School)