Dear Dad,
It's been two years now, and I still remember your last words on that night. Standing under the streetlamp in front of our house, you hugged me tightly and waved me off. As I walked away that day, I remember feeling like I was walking into oblivion. It's like leaving the home you've always known and wandering into a distance where anything can happen to you.
I miss you already; especially now you are gone.
In all of my 17 years of existence on Earth, nothing prepared me for the blow that came with losing you. How my heart jumped right out of my chest when I got the call that said I had to leave home. And when you walked me out, I believed you were getting rid of me. Because, who wants a daughter that is a liability?
I love you more than the bad days ahead.
Sometimes, I wonder if there was anything I could have done differently. Something that would make you hesitant to drop me off as you did that day. Something that would make you miss me so much that you wouldn’t want to let me go. Maybe if I had been more quiet and approachable, you wouldn’t have had to ship me off.
I love you more than the nights we ended with slamming doors.
The first word I remember mum calling me was "thief." Just because I was picky with food—which I didn’t understand until I got my autism diagnosis. I was picky with the texture of clothes I put on, as well as the number of people that would be in a gathering. And mum reminded me again and again that I was a thief because I couldn’t manage what we had. For the longest time, dad, I have felt terrible.
I love you more as the years passes by.
Then the day she called me a witch for mistakenly breaking a glass cup, you told me it was only witches that were as clumsy as I was, and that she was right. To you, I had to be a witch as there was no other explanation for why a child would be so clumsy. Research that I conducted after my autism diagnosis enlightened me that dyspraxia is a common characteristic of people on the autism spectrum disorder, for all levels.
There will be times when your heart will forget.
In all of those years, I never believed you loved me as you claimed. I never even believed you and mum are my parents. I don’t think any child deserves to suffer the way I did because I was unfortunate to be born into your family. Some days I really hate you and wish I could kill all of you. But where does that leave me? In jail?
I wrote you a letter, and I threw it away.
My therapist asked me to write a letter to you; I started, and then I crumpled the paper and threw it on the furnace. It infuriated me that someone like my therapist would think it was easy to compile years of grief into a two-paged letter. Where do I start from? How can I be asked to dig from a grave and then be told halfway to stop? Is that how it works?
If you ever doubt it, just look in my eyes, and you’ll know for sure.
I love you. Yes, some days I want you dead, but I love you. I would take a bullet for you if it means you would live to be happy and be everything you’ve always wanted to be. I hope I can do that much for you, seeing as you have sacrificed your great life to give birth to someone like me. Someone who continually keeps disgeacing the family — as you always say.
No matter how small the writing, there's always so much more to say.
Most of all, I hope mum births a girl child like me who she wouldn’t call a "thief," a "witch" and a "useless person." I hope so. I really do. Because kids who didn’t ask to be born deserve that much.
