Day eight: write a letter to someone saying something that you've never said before.
I thought a bit about everyone that I'm somewhat close to and about what I've told them and what I have not. In regard of my friends, I realized I've told just about everyone I know all I want them to know. Of course, there are cases in which I would have told a friend a lot more, but I stopped myself because I knew they wouldn't care almost at all about those things that are still important to me. I stopped myself so I wouldn't get hurt (...more). But then I remembered that there is somebody that I haven't told all I want him to know...
So I warn you. This will get pretty personal. I don't know where I'll stop myself if I start this letter...
In fact... is it too much to ask you not to read it? Well, you can read it, but if you do, don't judge me or my dad or anything of the sort. I'm basically writing down things I didn't even realize I had hidden somewhere in the dark corners of my heart... It will probably seem foolish or depressing for you...
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My dear dad,
Ever since I was just a little girl, I've been told by everyone that seemed to know you and had just met me that I looked a lot like you. At some point I even got used to it, to the point where, if someone who knew mom better told me I looked a lot like her, I'd be surprised. And it's true, I do have a lot of your facial features, your eyes and your hair color (although - lucky me! - mine is straight!) Lately, however, I realized that I am very much like you personality-wise as well, and I'm not so sure how I feel about that.
A few years ago I didn't even know much about your personality, because I didn't spend time with you. I can't even begin to tell you how much I suffered because of this. And maybe not so much because of this as because of how I feared you. I know I was the youngest and my brother was the one that got punished for little misbehaviours; I can barely recall a single time that I got punished for mine. But you know what was worse than a punishment for me? The moment when you'd call me to have a talk about what I did / didn't do and started scolding me. I always felt like crying when you did, and I remember that if you even noticed that, you'd tell me to stop it "or else you'd give me a reason to cry". Now that was worse than anything. You might have guessed that, right after you finished scolding me and I nodded or whispered a reply, I always ran in my room, into my pillow and cried. Somehow, it pained more than any physical punishment. Maybe because I didn't get to know another side of you as well as that one.
In the old house that we had until I was about 10, almost all the walls had cracks. Me and my brother always feared that the house would break down little by little every time you got angry. When you were angry, you were always slamming the doors loudly and scarily. The two of us always knew to hide in our room when we heard the noise the doors made when you slammed them. We did our best not to run into you in any way. I know I was scared. You might not know that, because of those times, it became my wish and my prayer that the man who will be the right one for me will not be quick to anger and will never get as angry as you used to be. I couldn't live with that.
One night, a good while after we moved in our new home, you came home angry because of work. You were going to leave for south Africa the next morning and I wasn't going to see you until you came back, but even if I didn't want to go to you when you were in that state (it became passive anger, but it was still scary), I still went into your room to say goodbye. Yours was very, very cold. Again, I went straight to my room and started crying. I took out a post-it note and wrote a reminder to pray for you all the time: for your safety there and your safe return. I think I might have fell asleep crying, but I can't really remember. Oh, I forgot about those days. I only read about them in a diary recently, and it made me remember it all. Funny, you know, all the things I wrote in my diary (except for some extremely rare apparitions of the name of my crush) were very general, boring stuff. There were days when I even wrote what I had for lunch! But once in a while, I wrote about you and how it all made me feel, and it surprised me to see how intense my writing was there... The next morning, after you left for South Africa and I woke up (or was it just the same week?), mom said you asked her to tell me that you were very sorry for that evening. It made me happy, the fact that you apologized for it. When you came back, you brought me those wooden safari animals that I still adore, that tall, wooden giraffe, the cute doll from Beni and that key chain... And I was glad I prayed for you every day.
I do love you a lot, even if I remember all these things. I'm glad you won't read this letter, because I know for sure that it would make you very sad. I know you tried to change lately - and you really did! I don't remember the last time I saw you as angry as in my childhood (unless I was in my room... there were times when I knew you were angry but I never went to see you; I guess I just ran away from it). Even if you did get angry, I believe it hasn't been as bad as then. Even so and although I appreciate it, I still have a scar on my soul. And another scar from how you never managed to spend time with me. And a wound that is still open because of how we still can barely talk to each other, because of how I don't really know you and I don't believe you really know me.
In time I realized that, more than in appearance, we are very much alike in personality. Almost too much alike. That's actually one of the reasons why we can't communicate with each other. I admire you for the way you can easily talk to strangers about work and your jokes were always the best (I'm sad I didn't get that from you as well - I can still hope I'm a late bloomer at that). But neither of us can open up to people. You used to be upset with me when I said I can't talk to people I don't know, and at some point I got upset with you, because you were scolding me when you where just like me. You have mom for that, she's good at it. I have pressure, and it doesn't do me good.
Sometimes I just want to take you aside and tell you to start talking to people, or at least to mom, about work and your parents and the matters of the church and the problems with the firm and the workers and about how you feel and what you're thinking of doing and maybe about how you don't know what to do or about how you feel confused and troubled and overpressured and exhausted of everything. I wish you'd stop keeping it all to yourself. I wish you'd try to seek healing for your own wounds, so the little words I say (lightly) with no intentiotion of upsetting you wouldn't hurt you anymore. It hurts me almost as much to find out later that you felt pain because of something I said probably as a joke or a funny thing that happened. I wish you would try to do these things because I really care about you and I can't stand seeing how you're destroying yourself - your health, your mind, your emotions.
I have wounds of my own. Some of them are even because of you. I also get hurt by little things you do or say and I know you have no idea that they affected me in any way, but I always try to hide it because I know how I feel when I find out that I've hurt you without intention. Or maybe because I'm afraid that you'd think I'm foolish and over-sensitive. I'm trying to heal them now, or at least I hope I can. Some of my wounds are better now. Some still need recovery. I'm trying to bandage that wound that we seem to have in common right now every morning, when you take me to school. Mom used to tell me that you were upset because I'd never utter a word in the whole drive (you never told me anything that upset you and that's another thing that upsets me about you). I was also feeling bad because you never asked me anything at all - until I got used to it and didn't even think of talking to you. But when mom told me you felt like I was the one not communicating with you, I figured that, if you weren't going to start a conversation you wanted to have, I'd have to try. I can't even begin to tell you how hard it was to scramble through my mind in search for subjects to talk about. You didn't even want to tell me about work so I never asked. I couldn't ask anything really. I'd have to tell you about the boring things at school, and they were even more boring because you didn't know all the things mom knew about my classmates and my teachers and my subjects and just about everything. It's hard to talk to somebody when they hardly reply, especially for someone like me.
Neither of us are talkative. We're both completely introverts. I'm kind of socially awkward. I never have anything to say so I never say anything. It's a pretty dull way to live your student life in school. You've already gone through that, but I see that you're not the best at starting conversations with me either.
When I do nice things to you, except for the silly birthday presents, they're just about always because mom or my brother gave me the idea and encouraged me. The banana smoothie I sent you to work? Mom's idea to make one more serving. Texting to thank you for the lavander I mysteriously found in my room? (which turned out to have been from someone else later - oops!) My brother's idea. I'm just not very much like that.
There were times - many times - when I admired you ver, very much. It's amazing all you could learn to do by yourself: skiing, speaking english, all those computer programmes. I don't even know all that you taught yourself. I admire your studious nature, your love for books and reading (alhtough you don't have time for that anymore), all the care I see you give to your family, your genius in solving any and every kind of problems, that clever mind of yours that finds effective and amusingly simple sollutions for my complications (which I tend to have a lot), the wise thoughts that guide you and your decisions, the way you seem to know how to do anything and how you admit it when you don't know something. Oh, and the fact that "dad knows", as our old family saying goes. But there are also things I don't want to take from you.
I think you are amazing. You are quite a wonderful father that just missed the right moment to get to know his daughter and seems to be too scared to go ahead now. The relationship I want to ahve with you is too much like the one you have with my brother. I want to be able to joke with you freely. I want to be teased by you, and not be treated like a small fragile thing. I want to tease you without finding out that I hurt you instead. I want to be able to talk to you about anything. I want to be able to spend time with you just for pleasure without that rock on my chest and that heavy silence around us. I want to go to Starbucks with you and watch as you get some kind of weird coffee-drink while I stay away from it and order a tea or a hot/cold cocoa - just like you do with him. I wish we could both just open up to each other and smash this invisible, thick wall between us.
Dad, I admire you in milions of ways. I disaprove of you (yes, I get to disaprove of you because, although I am your child, I'm almost an adult) in other many ways. I care about you and it hurts me to see how your hurting yourself, thinking you are protecting us from all that is pressuring you by keeping it all to yourself. I may not want to be like you, but I sure am glad I took after you in some ways.
I love you, dad.
I wish you'd know all this. I wish you'd know all the ways I've been hurt and all the moments I've been happy because of you, so you wouldn't wonder what I think of you anymore (because if I really am like you, I think you do). I also wish I knew who I am in your eyes. I feel way to often that I disapoint you. I am crying as I write this, although I did my best not to shed a tear through the whole letter. I know you love me, my mind does. Not because you've told me, because you haven't done that much, but because mom and my brother told me. Apparently you've told them. It's harder to believe it this way, especially (aaahh, tears are falling down my neck) especially when my heart doesn't feel it. Instead, I remember the moments you looked coldly at me, the moments when I felt like a disapointment to you. I never know what to do to make you proud. I feel like my drawings are a childish hobby to you sometimes. You barely know I enjoy writing just once in a while. We never sing together, just the two of us; only when there's also mom with us, and my brother. Mom once told me she liked the way I think. I don't really think you know how I think. I don't think if you know half of my wounds or why I started that diet.
I guess I could write the summary of this letter in one paragraph. You've hurt me, but now you're hurting yourself and it pains me, because I deeply care about you. I wish we could talk, I wish we could have a proper relationship. I wish you knew me and I knew you.
I love you. I wish you'd tell me that, too.
your loving daughter,
Alexandra