Dear Father

Today is the day you were born

Without you 

I would not exist


I want to write beautiful things

Cherish the memories

Of when you took me to the amusement park

I held onto you

You were my protecter

At the time

Things were perfect.


There are many more memories.

I want to remember.

The brain has some how

Rewired itself to remember the pain.

All I remember is that you were my first heart break.

I remember that day so clearly,

Like it happened yesterday.

Your promised you would come pick me up

You never came.

I stared at the window, 

Waiting

it was raining that day.

It was my birthday.

You never came.


And ever since I knew what broken promises looked like.

What rejection and abandonment was.

I didn’t quite understand it.

I was only 7.

How could you know?

I tried to tell you 

You say with such pride, arrogance even.

“You waited for me and didn’t eat. Your grandmother called me late to force me to apologise”.

You laugh at my pain

I just stared

Shocked

Hurt

Like they all do.


You left me 

When I needed you the most

The other family was better

They gave you happiness

She didn’t want me in her house.

I was the bastard child.

Strange looking, not exactly black nor white.

You now say, you can never marry someone again if they don’t love your children.

But you did that to me

And never apologised.

Never said, I am sorry for leaving you.

I am sorry that I lived comfortably when you,

You lived in a cramped out house with 5 other members, counting pieces of meat for dinner.

You never said sorry.

Like they all do.


They say through time

Healing comes.

I had to forgive you.

Not for you but for myself

I had to let go for myself.

But triggers

Those damn triggers!

Just sends me into a spiral

All over again.

I am learning to live with the pain

You have caused.

I have to.

There’s no other way forward. 


I am thankful though.

I am thankful for seeing the man you have become

Realising that you did what you did for your own selfish reasons.

You hurt me and can’t see it, refuse to see it even when I show you 

My wounds

My scars

You don’t care

Or maybe, you do. 

Culture doesn’t allow you to show weakness,

Show vulnerability.

Culture and being a man has told me 

That to love a woman, you have to break her.

Only then can you be her saviour, her king.


I love you, father. 

I will always love you no matter how many more heartbreaks you cause.

Pain lives here because of you.

But I am also strong because of you.

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