dad – i hate how so much of me is made up of my hate for you.

the blood we share should’ve been enough for you to claim me, but it’s been a long time since you bothered to pick up the phone. you trained me to wait by the door, by the silence, like a kid who learned early that love came in checked boxes and scraps, that attention was something you earned by being small enough. i learned to cling to every moment with you like oxygen, like i would suffocate the second you pulled away, which you always did.

i hate how much of me is built from your absence, because you deserve no credit. you deserve nothing. i deserved a father. i deserved someone in the stands who that could “give a damn”, someone who would show up without being begged. you never did and somehow i spent years convincing myself that was my fault.

you broke something in me and called it resilience. you planted this sickness in my head and now i carry it everywhere, contaminating everything i touch, apologizing for the weight of my own sadness like it’s a personal failure instead of a wound you left untreated. i blamed myself for the way my brain twists, for how my heart hurts, but that lie only protects you. this is on you.

you abandoned me with the mess and expected gratitude for the debris you tossed back occasionally, just enough affection to keep me hopeful, just enough change to make me stay. how do you do that? make me doubt my own memory like it was all a lie, that you really were a hero, not someone just to make me cry. you give so little and still walk away clean. you become someone i dont recognize each time you leave, leaving me left to unlearn all of you i see in me.

i don’t want to be sick anymore. i don’t deserve this rot living in my chest and i never did. i deserved more than what you left me with. you ruined me pretending you were doing your best. the scars run so deep i can’t tell where you begin and i end. i open myself up and find you everywhere. everytime i feel wrong, it sounds like you. everytime i feel evil, it looks like you. everytime i feel broken, it moves like you. every time i feel wrong or evil or broken, it sounds like you, looks like you, moves like you. you were my everything and you turned me into nothing. worth nothing. good for nothing. disposable, useless, replaceable.you taught me a secret language and left me to decode all the things you led me to believe were true, because they all came from you.

but this sickness in my head is not mine. it was planted, fed, rewarded, and abandoned, and i will not carry it like it belongs to me anymore. i will not let you ruin me for the last time. i want to be something without your shadow stitched into my every through, without the poison in our shared blood claiming me your. i will be someone without you.

dad i hate you. i hate that i was never enough for you. i hate that your love never claimed me. i hate you dad, please dont call.