I can't imagine that it was your intention when you made your choices to sear rejection and abandonment in my heart from my mothers womb. Your failure to be present at my birth and in my life etched in my heart and in my self a deep sense of worthlessness, I mean children are very ego-centric. You could not carry the weight of my conception and birth, how then could others my existence? How then would anyone stay when you chose to leave. I was either too much for you or not enough for you, for you chose something else, how then could I be enough period... In your absence I failed to experience love from you and therefore to be taught that I am indeed loveable. I never received encouragement from you and therefore never really learnt that I can do 'it,' whatever 'it' may be, even when I don't believe that 'it' can be done. You never acknowledged my existence and so I find myself often wondering if my existence really matters at all... Do I matter to you dad? Have I ever mattered to you?
I have often wondered about the kind of man you are and like most kids have fantasized about what life with you and mom would have been like. In what ways am I like you? In what ways am I different from you? After all, I have 23 of your chromosomes in my genetic makeup. You are a stranger to me, an enigma. I recognize that you are a flawed person, as am I. Broken, as am I. I remember you once said that your father was just as absent and so in some ways I can understand that you did not know how to be a father, how could you. Yet sometimes I wonder if that's my way of making excuses for you, of lessening the deep sense of rejection and abandonment, the deep sense of loss that I carry In my heart today, in my relationships with others. As I grow older, I'm coming to understand that that which you do not possess, you cannot give and to expect one to give that which they do not possess is to be continunally disappointed and to set them up for failure. Forgive me please for continually doing this. Should you have been present in my life, yes. Should you have protected me, provided for me, loved me, cared for me, called me out into being, yes. Yes, yes, yes, you should have. More than anything, I just needed you to be.
There must be some good in you for my mother to have chosen you as her husband, as the one she trusted to father her child. This Father's Day I set you free, free from the responsibility of having to father me. Does this mean that I won't get angry at you at times, that I won't wonder, that I won't be annoyed by your absence, disappointed in you, no, but simply that you are no longer responsible for me. For though you may have been the most amazing father, or not, there is One is who most amazing. There is One who loves me, who loves you, infinitely more than I could have ever been loved by you. One who has never and will never fail us. One who knows us by name and the number of hairs that are on our heads. One who is intimately familiar with all our ways. This One, He's a good good Father, and this Fathers Day I pray that you would experience the Fathers heart for you, as I am daily coming to know His heart for me and who I am in Him, sometimes extremely difficult to believe and receive, but my journey in life is not yet over, and neither is yours. May you truly come to know this Good Good Father, it's who He is, it's how He is.
Your Daughter,
Tshepi
