I may be an adult now, but I would still love to have my father around, or at least know WHY he decided to quit on me and my sister, but I doubt I ever will.  I just hope that on day he changes his mind and decides to call or email and be a father again, just because my sister and I are over 18 des not mean he is finished being a dad, I think we need him more than ever now that we are struggling to find out who we are and make our way in this world.  Anyway, here are the lyrics to Lindsay Lohan’s Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father).

I wait for the postman to bring me a letter
And I wait for the good Lord to make me feel better
And I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders
family in crisis that only grows older

Why’d you have to go x3

(Chorus 1):
Daughter to father, daughter to father
I am broken but I am hoping
Daughter to father, daughter to father
I am crying, a part of me is dying but,
These are, these are
The confessions of a broken heart

And I wear all your old clothes, your polo sweater
I dream of another you the one who would never, never
Leave me alone to pick up the pieces
Daddy to hold me, that’s what I needed

So why’d you have to go
Why’d you have to go
Why’d you have to go

(Chorus 2):
Daughter to father, daughter to father
I don’t know you, but I still want to
Daughter to father, daughter to father
Tell me the truth, did u ever love me
Cause these are, these are
The confessions of a broken heart
Of a broken heart

I________ love you
I__________ love you
I_____________love you
I______________________
I love you

Daughter to Father, daughter to father
I don’t know you, but I still want to
Daughter to father, daughter to father
Tell me the truth, did you ever love me, did you ever love me
these are
The confessions of a broken heart

Oh Yeah

And I wait for the postman to bring me a letter

1. You call me names.
2. You mock me. In a high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like my own.
3. You make fun of me and the things I’m afraid of.
4. You make me cry.
5. You scream at me.
6. You have hit and slapped me.
7. You swear at me.
8. You aren’t just “a” hypocrite. You’re THE hypocrite.
9. You don’t play favorites. You play unfavorites. And I’M the unfavorite.
10. You talk about me behind my back.
11. You talk about me behind my back, knowing that I can hear you.
12. You get into fights with my dad when he defends me.
13. You tell me to get over myself.
14. You scare my siblings when you shriek at me.
15. You judge me.
16. You do not accept me for who I am.
17. The first time I tried to use a tampon, you yelled at me for not being able to figure it out.
18. You’re the only person I’ve ever called a bitch.
19. You’re also the only one I’ve ever thought worthy of such a title.
20. You turn everybody against me.
21. You hug my brother and sister to make up with them after arguments, but you never, ever hug me.
22. You get irritated at me when I ask for a goodnight hug.
23. You’re always leaving to go somewhere without me.
24. You so clearly love my little sister more than me, and you’ve even admitted it when I accused you of it.
25. Our fights never result in anything constructive. Just me getting my heart broken again and again and again.
26. If I ever commit suicide, it will be because of you.
27. I can’t remember a time when we were okay, emotionally.
28. You’re supposed to be my hero. You’re supposed to be loving, and caring, and kind. You’re supposed to be gentle and sweet and nice. You’re supposed to be a lot of things that you aren’t.
29. You think you know me.
30. You don’t.

~The girl who hides from you

We watched those two little boys grow and blossom for 2 weeks. Then you hit us that you wanted them back. I waited in my mother’s office for 12 hours while we waited to hear where we would be dropping the boys off too. Yet again you changed your mind. Again we took the boys home and raised them for another 2 weeks. On day 29 you called again. This time for good. This time you weren’t going to change your mind.

I refused to go home from work. My mom and dad had to force me to leave. I rode in their car for the hour drive in tears. We arrived home just before the social workers came. I fed each boy one last time and gave them hugs and kisses. You see after 29 days these boys were our lives. My husband had taken off from work all 29 days to be home with them. We took them to the pediatrician’s. We took the one to a cardiologist because of his heart murmur. We did this out of pocket because the boys weren’t covered under our insurance at that point. But the money isn’t the issue. The emotional hell you put us through was horrible.

The social workers who were supposed to be working for both of us were no better. That first day you said you were going to take them back I talked to the social worker. We explained that we were thinking of putting the boys in foster care. They made me feel horrible for even considering it. Then the day you finally decided you wanted the boys back I went through an additional hell dealing with the social workers. As I stood in my kitchen silently crying and fixing bottles for them to take with the boys, the social worker asked me how I felt. Really bitch I raised these boys for 29 days and you want to know how I feel that they are being taken away from me? Gee let me guess. But because these social workers would have control over whether or not we would be able to adopt again I had to say nothing more than I’m numb. To make matters worse, these social workers that you put your children’s lives in their control, didn’t know how to install a car seat. Not only did I have to say good bye to my boys that day, not only did I have to make bottles and pack their little things, I had to actually install their car seats so they could be taken away.

I hope you find a family that fit your criteria more and that the boys are with them. You see I will never forget the fact that you told me on the phone that your only problem with us was that we were not the same race as the boys. It honestly had no effect on us but you couldn’t get over it.

Your boys left that day to never return to our lives. But I can guarantee not a day goes by that I don’t think of them, wonder how they are, imagine what they would be like.

Listen, you stupid cow, I may be over 25 years younger than you, but I’ve been through shit you couldn’t even imagine. I did not grow up in a cushy double-income house in the suburbs like your goddamn kids did. Quite the contrary…I was fending for and taking care of myself for as long as I could walk. But somehow, despite whatever uninformed bullshit you want to spew about me, I turned out a hell of a lot more functional than anyone that ever emerged from your manhole. If you’re in such a position to judge me and my emotional fitness, then how the FUCK come you couldn’t manage to raise your own son into a MAN? How come you had to wait nearly 30 years for ME to come along and do that hellish job for you? What in sam hell were you DOING all those years? Certainly not raising your other kids, that’s for sure….another bitch you can’t stand had to come along and raise your OTHER son for you, decades after the fact. I’ll admit I’m a bit nuts, but honestly, dear, so are you, and on top of that, you’re not much of a mother.

I know you don’t think I’m good enough for your darling son. I’m sure I WON’T be by the time I’m done with him, but when he landed in my lap, he was barely fit to be living on his own. How the fuck do you produce such high standards for your child’s mate when you’ve allowed him to disintegrate into a raging alcoholic, overgrown adolescent with obvious psychological and neurological issues, far undereducated and up to his eyeballs in debt before the age of 30? YOUR KID WAS JUST A COUPLE OF YEARS AWAY FROM LIVING IN A FUCKING CARDBOARD BOX IN THE STREET, and you’re deluding yourself into thinking he’s going to hook up with Donna fucking Reed?! Personally, I think he did damn well: he got himself a well-educated, well-employed, GROWN ASS WOMAN, who has issues of her own, yes, but has learnt to cope with and overcome them. He got someone who has your stubbornness and work ethic, but actually has expectations of him that meet his potential, and the balls to hold him to them. That’s all it took. I’m not a magician. I just give a shit about him. Which you obviously don’t. You just give a shit about finding something wrong with ME.

Your son is sober for well over a year. He isn’t whoring around. He’s got worthwhile friends who aren’t hanging around simply to take him for a ride. He’s working his ass off, and instead of adding to his debt, he’s starting to pay it off. He’s got names for his personal issues, and he’s addressing them and working on them. He is a completely different person from the one he was a few years ago. And *I* had a big hand in that. You….not so much so.

I’ll be honest with you, I do have issues. I come from a screwed up background, which you’ve obviously figured out. The details are, sadly for you, none of your fucking business, but suffice it to say, I grew up in hell. I have been diagnosed with the same exact problems as your son, no more and no less….and I’ve been dealing with them for years. I have had problems with addiction. Physically, I’m not well, and sometimes I have to agree….I may be a little bit too old for your son. But regardless of what you or anyone else has to say, I’ve done damn well for myself, and I’ve done damn well for him. You should be happy for us, and you should be happy that the mess you left has been cleaned up by someone who knew exactly where to start, and who had the foresight to realise that your son wasn’t destined to be nothing more than an eccentric drunk. And most of all, you should take your idiotic judgments and shove them up your fat, wrinkly ass. You can guarantee you won’t be seeing very much of me regardless, but let me hear ONE MORE UNPLEASANT WORD has escaped your lips regarding me, and you will be hearing all this….and more….to your face. I HAVE been to hell and back, dealt with people far worse than you, so if you think I’m going to keep putting up with this crap, you’re going to learn very soon just how crazy I can be.

It makes me so cross, you want me to not make the same mistakes you did, but I’m not you. I realised I was turning into an alcoholic so I have been tee-total for one year, and you have just run yourself into the ground. You say i should shoot you if you ever start to turn into your parents, guess i should have shot you 15 years ago…

I can only find the strength to say this here, because you would only change my words, manipulate my thoughts and most likely end up ruining our relationship forever. I still want a relationship with my father, just a less argument filled,more grown-up relationship.

You want to know why Dad and I are so close? He tried to protect me from you! Sadly, once he moved out, the abuse got worse. You had so many different men coming in and out of the house, and you would call me a slut! I would talk to counsellor’s at school because I couldn’t bare to live with you anymore and you would lie to child protective services. The best part was they bought your lies and no more then 5 minutes after they had left, you had me pinned up against the wall choking me and punching me in the face. Great system!

Then you moved us across the country away from our entire family so you could be with your loser boyfriend, whose job was breaking and entering. You gave us 2 weeks notice to say goodbye to everyone we loved. Then the sickest part of all, you met some guy 2 days into our train ride and screwed him and decided that we were going to get off in the city he lived in so you and him could start your happy lives together! WHAT?!! Then when I refuse to get off the train – you called me selfish and that I didn’t want you to be happy. You just pulled me away from my best friends and the family I knew for 15 years to move across the country for this loser – if he was so important to you then why would you want to move in with some stranger with your 4 children. You left me and my brother on the train crying and took off with the new guy and my two little brothers…only to return a half hour later calling me every name in the book. Once we arrived to our final destination, you are hugging and kissing the loser you wanted to move out here for like nothing happened on the damn train. So sick.

You called me ugly my entire life and now you are so proud to show me off to everyone because you think I should be a model. How about be proud of my achievements and what I’ve accomplished with my life. When I told you I was going back to school – there was no support, no congrats! When I told you that I landed my first career in the field I worked so hard in, you said nothing. Are you jealous?? It’s sad that after 32 yrs, I still carry this hatred for you. I was so happy when you moved away so I didn’t have to listen to your self pity anymore. And still in the last 2 years since you’ve moved – I have only seen you 3 times and you have caused the biggest problems every single time. How pathetic are you?! You are 50 years old and you act like you are a child.

I will never forget when you couldn’t be bothered to help my brother. You thought he would commit suicide because he was so depressed. You left him in that room to rot and you talked about him like he wasn’t there. You asked for my help and I tried! The help center wanted to talk to you, but you couldn’t be bothered. Instead, you focused your attention somewhere else to cause drama for me instead of taking care of your own damn son!! When I lost my son, you jumped on the opportunity to take time off work. You took a whole damn week off work and I didn’t see you once. You had the nerve to call me to bitch about how your work wasn’t going to pay you for the leave of absence. Who lost the baby?? OH right, it was me but somehow it was about you. At his funeral you made a huge scene, how I apparently stabbed you in the back because the celebrant didn’t mention your name. Your name was the only name not mentioned because YOU didn’t call the celebrant like she had requested…but yes, you are the victim and I sure did stab you in the back. How selfish!!! In the parking lot at the funeral home you requested extra copies of the service with his picture on it so you could show your work that he was a real baby and not a miscarriage and then you were going to go on stress leave! You make me sick.

So here we are – My family is taking care of your so called “suicidal son”. It’s been 8 damn months and you are so ungrateful. Everyone else has to pick up the slack for you. It’s funny what a little support and a push does because he is doing so great! You are so unhappy in every aspect of your life – it’s quite sad. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone in my whole life as much as I despise you. I’ve only ever felt sorry for you.

photo from Project Gutenburg

But something went wrong over the years, maybe I screwed up too much, moving back and forth between everyone. Lying to you and causing trouble. Maybe you got tired with dealing with me. I would understand that, if you stopped talking to me because I am a screw-up… it would be a stupid reason not to talk to your daughter or grandchildren, but it would be a reason. I messed up, I was ‘the bad kid’ that made a whole lot of mistakes, we all know that.

But what did they do to you? My sister has been the golden child, learning from all the mistakes I made I guess. She never caused any trouble, never lied to you, never even asked for anything. Why should she be punished for my mistakes? I would love more than anything for you to just call HER, even if you never talked to me again, maybe I don’t deserve your love, but she does and it KILLS me to see you be such an ass to her, it hurts her more than you will ever know. And she did NOTHING to deserve that.

I don’t even know if you are alive, I just wait for a call or a letter from someone telling me you are gone, if anyone even will. I have even called the police down where I knew you were living before to ask how they find relatives of people when they die, to find out if I could attach my name and number to your name, in case anything happened. How sick is that??

Then you show up at my wedding, after not talking to any of us for over a year, I emailed and emailed in the months leading up, begging you to come, hearing back only once that you would come. I didn’t let myself believe you, not even when I talked to you the day before and you said you were on the road. I wanted to, but you had met me down so many times before that I couldn’t let you ruin my day. At our rehearsal that night we practiced both ways, having my father in law walk me down the aisle just in case you didn’t show up… that was so embarrassing, seeing the look on everyone’s face, all of them hoping to god you just showed up for me.

The next day when you called and said you were in town, I was so exited, but I still didn’t get my hopes up, it was not until you walked up to me and said hi that I believed you. You acted like it was nothing special, and I was too exited to see you to ask for a explanation. We spent the day together, and you walked me down the aisle, leaving the next morning with promises to call and visit… you called once to ask me to email you a file off the old laptop you gave me as one of the wedding gifts. I have not heard from you since.

You promised you would call my sister, you never did. I hated telling her you came, it felt wrong, unfair. Why did you come see me when I was the bad one? The one who screwed up so much in the past that you don’t even love. Why didn’t you call her? She wouldn’t ask for anything, no explanations, she would just say hi and talk to you about her day.

I feel so bad for my mother though, for all those years I so readily forgave you, I so easily let the mistakes go, even when one of my first memories of you was you leaving us with a garbage bag full of crap, me standing at the screen door in the rain screaming to come with you. I would forgive you for anything. Yet I held grudges with mom for so long, it was unfair of me and stupid, she may have made mistakes but even through all of it she still calls me, she still cares. Why was I so quick to forgive the man who left me as a screaming child while I couldn’t forgive the one that tried her best to calm me down? How messed up is that that I am so screwed up by you that I did that?

I am who I am now because of you, and while I would like to say that is a good thing it isn’t. I have so many complexes I can’t even count them. I can’t talk to the rest of my family because I feel they all hate me… is it true? I doubt it, it is just another one of my many issues. I get around my aunts and uncles and I feel like a tiny little person, like I am being judged when it is more likely that you and I are the only ones judging me. One thing I think I know though is that they love me, it is not their fault I am uncomfortable around everyone, it is mine for letting your lack of love affect me and my self esteem so bad. I only wish I knew how to change it and have a family again.

Whatever, I could go on and on about how you are a failure right now. But all I can say is that if I ever talk to you again I will want a explanation. The time of it being ok for you just to call and ‘be my dad’ with no questions asked is over. I will not let you back into my life without a reason. So don’t even call until you are ready to tell me why you have been gone. You have done too much to me and my family to just let you show up and disappear again.

Your Daughter