I want YOU to be proud of ME.
If you know me well, you will know, I love my dad; I do, despite what I always say. I love him, miss him and all the rest. My dad makes me feel safe, happy, loved, lonely and well a lot of things, all the things that a father should make a daughter feel and then some. I used to love it when he came home, but when he left I used to think that he took a part of me with him...he used to expect a lot from me, it took me a long time to learn that but that he also doesn’t expect much from his baby girl. I don’t think he has realised I have grown up without him. He missed out on the part where I grew up. I have stopped being helpless and a child.

I don’t know what to say about my dad because on one hand he makes me fell so happy but on the other he makes me so sad. I once tried to write him a letter but as I wrote, I wrote things I could never really say to him. I stopped very quickly. Not even I really wanted to read it.

“Daddy, I want to tell you that I want to make you proud. I want YOU to be proud of ME. I want to make you happy. Maybe if I do that, you will stay with me. You might watch me grow, watch me live and help me through everything. You don’t really work hard for me, daddy, but I try to work hard for you, daddy. I work hard so you will be proud of me. While I’m out here becoming an adult, making decisions that will be what gets me through the next week. Making friends, looking after myself, discovering the real me. I was once told to choose two values, at the time I thought that it was a tough decision, I’d never really been told to do that before. But I did. The first thing that came to mind was that I should value my family. See daddy??? I value you. I value family but now as a write this I am coming to ask...can I really value family? Because I don’t really know what a family is. I don’t think we are a family. In our own way I’m sure we are, but doesn’t a family try to always be better, mum still tries. But, but the rest of us, you and me, we stopped trying. I don’t think we are a family anymore. Mum tries hard, she wants us to be a family, she says we are just me and her. I haven’t seen you for a while daddy. Mum and you haven’t spoken, I think she might be angry with you.

I want to make you proud daddy. I want to do right by you. But how can I if you’re never here? How can I truly value family, if I don’t think I have one?

My dad also has another side, the side I love. When he is here, there is no way you will see me when I’m with him and me not be smiling. He makes me laugh and I love him for it. I just don’t think that he knows me, knows any of me or ever will. That’s the part that makes me sad.

Written on 21 September 2005 at 9:36 pm

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Quote of the moment:
Up where they walk. Up where they run. Up where they stay all day in the sun. Wanderin' free. Wish I could be. Part of that world