Were you really a father to me, or simply a mere memory.
Of someone I dreamed would be.
But this letter isn’t a poem to you.
I wrote one to mother months ago, and every week I’ve been pondering whether I should write one to you. I never know what to say to you, or what memories to reminisce, simply because there are none.
Yes, you were a father, but biologically only. You weren’t a father until you had to be. Until, you got the call that mom had died, and you suddenly had to drop that neglectful act and realize you had two kids to raise whom you left behind.
But according to you, you never left us behind, did you?
You’d send $500 a month to keep us barely below the poverty line. You’d take us on Sundays to shopping malls and Jamba Juice trips in hopeless attempts to buy our love and respect, but those are feelings that cannot be bought.
They are earned, but you didn’t earn them.
Yes, I loved you the way any daughter unconditionally loves their father, but there was nothing else to love.
You missed dance performances for business trips, and movie nights during computer drifts.
I have no memory of you besides the fragments of moments spread over the years of my childhood, a childhood I long to forget.
Do I miss you? I wish I could say yes, but there’s nothing left to miss. Yes, you were better than mom, at least at parenting, but at least mom was there. At least she left knowing that she’d always be in my mind.
I wish I could pour my heart into this letter like I did for mom, but I simply can’t. She changed my life, but you weren’t around enough to do that.
I know you tried your best. I really thank you for that. You did everything you could to keep my childhood intact.
You were pure at heart, but for a child who was ignored desperately, pleading for an escape, it would never be enough.
As much as I loved you, like any daughter loves a father…
Well, that was when I really met you, your soft hands and nervous laughter, nervous but happy.
I remember when we first started talking, during awkward lunch hours, and way too late at night over text. I remember that time when you walked me back to the bus and everyone inside was staring at us, but our friends approved. They knew just how perfect we would be for each other.
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I remember that first kiss, so sweet and unsure, but so convinced it was right. I remember realizing how madly I was falling in love with you, when I had to leave you for the summer.
We have such a great history. I mean, you sent me flowers to Germany. You gave me an engraved necklace confessing your love. We’re going to go to Paris together.
So I’m asking. Why do we have to end like this?
Don’t get me wrong, I know this is the best decision for us to make. But why? Why is this the best we can possibly do? The longest we can possibly go?
I don’t understand the universe. Once it brought two soulmates together, why would it break them apart so soon? Why would it give us this choice to make, so bitter and sour and burning hot?
It’s not fair. You know that, I know that. And obsequiously, we go along with it.
I see couples that get so much more time together, that get to go out for dinner on a Tuesday night, or go watch a movie after school, or walk their dogs together at sunset, and I am so jealous. It’s that red, yellow, glowing jealousy that you can’t turn off. I hate it. I want to be happy with what we are given. But there will always be this huge part of me that wishes for us to have that life together. I know we deserve it.
It’s been a couple months, a lot has changed. In approximately 30 hours I will have to plunge headfirst into your world, ready or not.
I told you before that I have bent, folded, and shaved off the idiosyncrasies, made myself two dimensional, and now — now you’ve figuratively and physically slapped me in the face with a decision that has so many facets to it I don’t think it belongs in the three dimensional world.
Every time I try to settle my heart and think about this I feel ill. Like I can’t think straight, like I’m drowning.
Explain to me how you chose me, so that I may choose you. Explain to me how I can possibly know what I want. Explain to me how I can barely stand to look at the name of college, imagine myself at college, without feeling like I’m buried alive with fear of making the wrong decision and hating myself for it.
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I feel as though I am still stuck as two dimensions and that this decision requires at least four dimensions to be safe but actually in reality somewhere around six.
I am in fact more terrified now, the future now rests in my hands, not yours. What if mine aren’t big enough, what if they shake too much, what if they go to pull the wrong lever?
I have never been so scared in my life. I am so incredibly scared to make a decision that I won’t be able to live with, that I will close a door that would have been perfect.
I don’t know what I’m going to do, the hours are passing by, I have finals and APs coming but all I can do is sit and stare into space wondering what the hell I’m going to do with myself. Which in turn makes me more nervous because if this is how I’m handling it how am I going to handle the actual stress of college?
I’m left with the ultimate feeling of: if I feel like I’m pulling apart at the seams now, college is going to break me, and I don’t want to be broken.
Everyone else seems so able to say: “F**k it this is where I’m going.” They seem so okay, I can’t see if they feel like they’re dying inside, they all seem impervious to the nerves and the fear that they won’t live up to what they have told themselves they can do.
I haven’t lived nearly as much life as you, college reader, so what do I have to decide with, a handful of microbes in my gut that feel like they’ve just gotten off the teacup ride ready to vomit?
I don’t know what to do, who to be? Do I have the strength to rise in adversity, to swallow up those things that would make me sink? Do I have it in me to carve out my own path and people? How do I decide between totally different things that pull on me the same?
So, college reader, I told you who I was, apparently you liked me and now here I am.
There was a certain amount of comfort to be had in overheating, he thought, it was a constant of summer and reminder that he was alive, he supposed.
Looking through the windowed roof of the day room with the comforting presence of her head on his stomach he couldn’t help but wonder at the heat, even indoors with the overhanging shade of the trees above the day room, it was stifling.
He felt her shift against his bottom rib on the left side, the small huff of breath that almost said: what to do? but then she settled back down and closed her eyes.
What to do indeed, heat washed over every thing in his head. It was sluggish and he watched the shadows on the panes of the roof sway with shadows from the trees that swayed lightly in the humid breeze. What to do?
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They were wasting time he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. He let his hand idly bush through her hair, burning up from the sunlight it had absorbed. He was glad she had stuck around, it was a good feeling.
When she was around he could pretend it didn’t feel like he was falling apart. Laying there on the floor in the heat it felt like the brittle glue holding him together had melted again into place, whole.
In the sun it was perfect, her hand rested lightly on his ribs, the knuckle of her middle finger skimming the patch of t-shirt over his heart. Time was passing by him at an alarming rate, it made his heart race — there wasn’t enough time to begin with, why was he squandering it?
A bell sounded from further in the house and his blood recoiled, the hand in her hair tensed and pulled at the strands, he could hear footsteps approaching. It had reached the hour, he should get back to work but his hand stayed in her hair.
He placed his other hand over her upturned one on his chest and closed his eyes, sunlight warming his eyelids.
It was oppressively hot but that was okay for him, it was okay for her and the footsteps receded almost as soon as they were heard.
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