Short stories

Letter to you, Dad.

I would start by asking you the questions that grind my soul, but I would not succeed other than being more confused than I already am. I don't want you to think that I'm reproaching you for anything, but deep down in my soul, I admit that I wish you could sometime read these lines and be struck by a pain full of remorse.

Why?

Because of you I do not know the meaning of the word "father." I don't know how paternal love feels, and now it's already far too late to change that in any way. I don't know what it's like to be "daddy's girl" and feel safe knowing that you have a hero who will always defend you. I don't know those warm feelings and the feeling of fulfillment, of having a "happy family." My tears were never wiped away by your gentle hands, but you provoked them to me by absence. I never boasted of "my daddy." I didn't have that male influence in life, not a good one or that I would have liked, anyway. Blood is not made, but it does not quench your thirst, nor does it warm your heart.

You should have been my first love, the first man to whom I would offer my unconditional affection and in whose arms I could find the peace I so desperately need. It should have, I repeat. But you were the first disappointment, the first knife that pierced me to the marrow of my bones. If my own father hasn't turned out to be a man and to keep me from pain, what can I say about others. I searched for that paternal something in every man who passed through my face, on the street, through other families, through teenage loves, through cold sheets and especially through my soul. And I loved, Dad. I loved with so much pathos that I consumed myself. In a sudden way. Little by little. And so I made the wrong choices, I was humiliated, sick, abnormal.

I've done things I'm not proud of, I've created a face of myself who doesn't represent me, but that keeps me away from people like you. I changed and it hardened my soul, Dad.

Because of you I hated myself, I asked myself questions over questions, I sought relief in the arms of monsters. It is because of you that we have become our own source of pain.

You have taught me what pain means and how to lose confidence in myself. You were the first to leave me and refused to give me any chance, without even giving me the opportunity to have given you at least a small part of the love I lost in cold souls, indifferent glances, nights without stars and rainy days.

Thank you, though. Thank you because of what you have done, what you have not done better said - that is, nothing, I have learned to be strong, not to show my weaknesses and to hide my pain as best as possible.

No one knows the damage you have left inside me. No one knows that you have left a huge void in my soul. The walls of your room in my heart have crumbled, the colors have faded away, the dust being the only one that fills the room dimly lit by a few questions. And a child. A lost child in that deserted place. Lost by self and forsaken by you.

I have nothing to forgive you or ask for your forgiveness, much less. The time of those moments has long passed.

But I wanted to tell you that your little girl feels alone, Dad. Your little girl needs you. Your little girl is full of pain and no one understands her. And that little girl died, dad.

You weren't there when you were supposed to, now it's too late.

Your little girl became a woman.