Submission 163
To my most precious Dad
How strange it feels to write that after all this time, that makes me ache. It has been 16 years, almost to the day, since you left. I used to write you letters constantly after you died, did you ever read them?
Losing you felt like a grenade going off in our lives, I literally had no clue that you were struggling. You were there one day and gone the next. I used to tell myself you had ended your life because you were terminally ill and didn't want to stay around to become more ill. I did not know what depression meant or that that could take you too. I hear others talk about you in the family, and feel cheated that they got so much more time with you than we did. It feels wrong to be learning about you from others and not you, they knew you so much better than I did.
I find myself looking for connections to you everywhere, whether it be a little saying, some music you liked or an opportunity to talk about you. There is so much I want to tell you and share with you, I don't know where to start. Next year I get married and whilst this fills me with so much love, it feels painful that you won't be there with me.
I remember feeling angry that someone once tried to define me by what had happened to you, but overtime I have found it to be true. Almost everything I do feels geared to want to save and rescue others, to make everyone feel as loved as I wish you felt. That is my life's work now, it is my purpose. I wish more than anything that it wasn't.
I wish we had been enough for you to stay.
For so long I felt scared to even look at my grief as if it might lessen my pain or I might forget something, that I would be letting go of you. I was holding on as tight as I could. I have let go of my anger, and I am holding on to my grief less tightly. It is nice to think of our happy times. I look out at the world and wonder what you make of it, I imagine that we could sit and put the world to rights together. Your vision made the world feel a better place to be and made things feel easier to change.
My heart still aches for you.
To see you, to hug you and to talk to you again is what fills my dreams. I love you so much and I feel sad that that love has no where to go. I hope you can feel it somewhere. You were and always will be so loved.
I love you infinities