We haven’t really talked in years, seven years to be exact. You see me every morning and every night, but we leave our relationship at acknowledgement. Your anger streams through my blood through my body. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you, but you can never leave my blood. 

My mind is at constant war between forgiving and forgetting. How do I forget the moments worth remembering, when you would put me up on your shoulders until I could finally reach the ceiling? How do I forgive the constant torture you put me, my brother, my mother and my grandmother through? Fighting between my youth and my age and my mind and my heart left me in painful silence.

I’ve blurred away all memories, the good and the bad because nostalgia pierced through every inch of my heart. Sorrow that those memories are gone and sorrow that those moments define our relationship now. For six years, sadness embodied my being until I became the skeleton of emotion. That feeling was finally unfamiliar and all those memories buried deeper than the darkest blue.

Numbness was the only emotion at my core, leaving me filled with nothing. But I thank you. Because of you, sadness and sorrow are familiar. I no longer feared that unknown as it was ingrained in my very person. Happy birthday father.