The letter.

You look down and see an old envelope, with a yellow rose of Texas stamp on it that cost $.32 cents. The envelope has a little splash of gold glitter on it, like it's been stored in a junk drawer somewhere. As you flip it over, you see the flap hasn't been sealed. Inside is a self-sticking mailing label - so old that the glue is a deep antique gold color and has become useless. On the front is an address - your address from years upon years and moves upon moves ago. The handwriting is distinctive... but feels oddly childlike to you. Oddly large letters, mostly capitals... and yet you'd swear you write your own N's just like that.

You put the label back in the envelope and remove the letter hiding behind it. One piece of paper, removed from a legal-sized pad. Folded 6 times longways, and once down the middle. It's dated clearly on the top right... 2/15/98, Sun. You start to read...

Hi [Your Name],
This is your long lost DAD, a... father a.... or whatever you want to call me; Hey watch it, you know what the Bible says about that. Watch your tongue, oh well! OOPS!
I certainly am looking forward to meeting you. I've always loved you and sensed a longing for all the things I missed ^experiencing & seeing as you've grown up. I just recently acquired a photo of you when you were 13, it looks like a school picture. My my you have gotten big. The other or last picture I had of you was of a snaggle-toothed 4 yr. old. A tiny little thing!
Thanks to ^Aunt Cindy I also got some pictures of summer 96 when that you and [your mother's name] came to the Ganty House. Thank God for small favors! Also Brooke & Cindy, and Ashley's feet are in the photo too!
It appears to me that [your mother's name] has done a good job of raising you and that God has had his hand on you too; or maybe their in unison. Anyway you look like a million to me and my hopes for you span the universe. That's just the way us daddies think! You were a delight as a child and I'll bet you always will be.

A true friend forever,
Daddy [Your father's name]!

You feel... nothing as you read the words. And that spurs a rush of relief. As you refold the letter some other emotions begin to trickle down. A little bit of grief over the fact that he never understood you, and clearly did not want to - no matter what he thought he wanted. A little bit of thankfulness surfaces - that he stayed out of your life when you would have let him in. A bit of wonder for if the drugs forced him into what seems to you like an oddly surface and childlike response to what you wrote... but in all honesty deep down the main idea running through the back of your mind while you read was: BULLSHIT. Every line felt like one a salesman would tell you as he tried to convince you that his snake oil was different - it would finally do what you had been promised all the others would do. You begin to refold the letter, placing it back behind the label, in the glittery envelope with a stamp that will never be used. As you walk into the room where you keep your important papers and mementos in a filing cabinet, you ponder just where to put this one. You don't want to put it with the cards you get - you like to look at those when you have a bad week. As you open the file drawer you decide to just put it in a blank folder in the back behind the other memento folders. Once that's done, you head back into the rest of your little apartment - back to your life.

***

When I was 14, I wrote my father a very deeply thought out letter, that I drafted over and over. I labored over it longer and with more thought and care than I have any paper I've written up until my thesis. It did begin with me saying I felt that the title Daddy needed to be earned. He spat on that idea twice in this letter. I knew that might hurt his feelings... but I can't say I cared then or do now. I was only interested in getting to know someone who would accept the truth of my life without him, and choose to overcome it or start fresh. This man took all of my mother's money and all of their things in the divorce (he was quite the charmer from everything I hear... silver-tongued, charismatic, etc.), he even went back and took the money given to the funeral home so my baby brother would have a headstone. I understand that was an addiction thing... but I honestly don't care. He chose to try a drug known to be that addictive - heroin. He was clearly dumber than I am. He never paid child support - not once in my entire life. I have lived in someone's garage before, suffered verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of family members we've been forced to live with (not talking about my mother - she's a different story and she never abandoned me). There were times we only had donated food to eat, and donated clothes to wear, and donated roofs over our heads, but we had them and we had one another. I had a stress related ulcer in the 3rd grade. He made sure the one thing he did have when he killed himself (which I strongly believe is the coward's way out... it's much harder to live than to die) - a house my mother paid for - went to his mother and my aunt. I didn't want it - but it was sneakily done to make sure his only living child would get nothing from him.

I know that he got photos of me, I saw them when I was in the Ganty House. So... he also lied... or he was such a ruin of a person from the years of hard living and substance abuse that he didn't even know. From the sounds of things he was really only clean when he was in prison - though I can't be sure of that. My only real information source about him are his mother and sister... and his mother regularly crafts her reality out of smoke and mirrors (she blamed my father not being in my life on my mother... there's not a thimble of truth in that). My aunt I just don't know well enough to know.... but she went along with the stories my grandmother told the two times I spent any time with her.... and well, I'm not one who likes to deal with that. If my life taught me one thing - it's that trust must be earned. Liars don't tend to do very well at that one - no matter how well meaning the lie is... I have no desire to embrace a false reality and won't put up with one just to humor them either.

I don't blame him for anything negative that has happened in my life, and I am extremely grateful for the experiences that I have had (now that they're in the past)... but once upon a time there was a creative imaginative little girl who truly believed she was lovable. Who never had a shadow of a doubt about it - and he killed her... he killed her every time she tried to come back to life. He ruined my belief that anyone can provide me with security, that anyone will ever actually love me above others - like I would like to do for someone else someday. Combine him with my mother - and I am not sure I can ever believe in relying on someone else. It's sad in a lot of ways.

The final part of all this is that my aunt got my mother's e-mail hoping to get my e-mail from her later. But she hasn't used it. I told my mom if she asked to talk to me, I'd be happy to talk to her. I'm not trying to make them work to get to know me... I'm just looking for proof that they're not using me to make themselves feel better. That entire family seems to be all talk. My aunt has reached out twice... but even when she does it always feels like they want something. They wanted me to come to the funeral... why? To remind me that they have a fantasy of my life? To give me the blanket my father had on his lap when he shot himself in the chest, what was the purpose of that? To parade me in front of all his friends and family who never knew me? To make me wander the house I was born into, where my room still looked the same and my mother's handwriting was still on the walls in the laundry room.... why?? What was the point?

THIS is why children are so important to me. I've been the eternally unwanted. That sounds so dramatic, but it's pretty true. I kept looking for a good male figure as I grew up... I don't know if that was instinct, reaction to my mom's sometimes abusive ways, or what. I wish I had found one.
- The man my mother was with that raised me (he had a huge impact on me and was always the man who was my mental father)... eventually left her, but not me for a while... but then he also left me, because his new girlfriend didn't like me.
- After that she eventually married my stepfather. He and I hated one another.... openly. He openly disliked me. Very pleasant 5 years of my life there. His 3 kids moved in, I got to share my mother and my home with them, and the man hated me. I gave as good as I got.... but he was a nasty loud fighter. When he and my mother would fight I would sneak out or hide. I can't say he did anything good for my ideas of men.
- My grandfather verbally and emotionally abused me when we lived with him to the point that it was years before we could talk again. I watched him physically assault my mother. He took everything we had including our current home, and he made sure we lost everything we had in storage when he left too- bye bye childhood. That was the 2nd time I had to give away my pet because we lost our home too - because of him.
- I've had not 1 but 2 pastors turn on me. I trusted my youth pastors, I was a girl in trouble looking for guidance who was too serious for her peers. One ended up being a wonderful figure in my life for a while.... then he began to embezzle money.... and things got weird both with me and in the church. The other did much the same thing. He used me as a poster child to bring people into the church, tried to convince me my 'gift' was hands-on healing (I was a praise singer) and then when one of the older boys tried to molest me at a function and I told him about it - he told me to stop being so welcoming of attention.
- There are lesser incidents, many actually, but yeah. It's all a pattern. A bit of a sad messy history. And all through it there were moments where I saw real dads around me, and wanted, but it's just not something I'll ever have.

Reading this letter made me feel so much better in a way though - I didn't short him by not trying harder. In fact, I probably saved myself from just being more disappointed and crushed than I ever was before.