Daddy.
I talked to my dad for the first time tonight since he’s been out of prison. He called to tell me he has a brain annurysm. My heart felt for him. To be honest, my compassion kind of pisses me off. Because I’ve taken the time to know and understand addiction and that it isn’t a moral disease, but rather, a real, true, affliction with the ability to be diagnosed, it’s hard for me to be angry at the man.
He could’ve tried harder, I know. But I know he loved me. I wish all the pictures I have of he and I together weren’t from days I can’t remember. I wish I could remember him loving me. I see it in his eyes in the pictures of us together, I made him proud, I was his baby girl, and the rest, well, the rest I can attribute to his habit.
I want to give him a second chance, but I don’t know where to start. All the lost time is almost too overwhelming. I would rather it be more cut and dry, if he’s out of my life for good I don’t have a reason to think of time lost. But when I talk to him and I hear him now, sober, all I can think about is why the hell could he not have been this person when I was a little girl? Why now when I don’t need him anymore? I don’t, I really don’t. I have built my life just fine without him, so any ways I let him in my life now are because of a want, a curiosity about the man who helped make me, but not because of a need.
