Daddy's Girl

He’s coming. Any minute now…
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for all my life and I… I don’t know if this is what I want anymore. My entire life, all I’ve ever wanted was to meet my father. He “mysteriously” left when I was born. He didn’t even stick around to hold me. After that, every birthday was lacking. I began to dread them.
The day I turned five, I imagined how amazing my father was. He was so proud of me, even if all I had done was discover insects in the garden. He’d be strong, like all the heroes in the stories. He’d be smart, and know as many answers as a calculator. Best of all, I was the apple of his eye. Now that I know what he is, I know it was all a lie.
On my eighth birthday, I discovered the only photo of my father that we had. It endeared me to him. In the picture, he is looking down with a half-smile on his face. He was everything I’d thought I’d wanted, but looking back now, I realise just how…average he looks.
When I turned nine, we had to write a story for school about someone we admired. Of course, I chose him. We then, as a treat, got to bring them to school, kind of like ‘Show and Tell.’ You can imagine how that went.
On my twelfth birthday, I came home from school in tears. Ever since that assignment three years prior, the other children had begun to bully me. And I had taken it all. But that was worse. That day they went too far. It was my birthday!
By the next year, I had changed. My mother could see it. I could see it. But I didn’t care. That was when my mother sat me down and explained everything to me. It wasn’t that my father didn’t love me. It was that he was in jail. Jail. I couldn’t listen to her anymore. She wanted to explain, but I wouldn’t hear it. I couldn’t. My father was…is a criminal!
One year ago, on my seventeenth birthday, my father was released. He had rung up, with all manner of excuses. I refused to talk to him. How dare he? How could he intrude on the life Mum and I built? It made her cry. And he forgot it was my birthday.
Today I’m eighteen, and I’m about to meet him. I don’t idolise this man anymore, with excesses of misplaced love. Neither do I hate him for leaving me, or for recklessly disobeying the law, and paying the price - but I find I can’t love him. My feelings are…neutral.
I hear a car pull up.
Dear God...
A car door closes.
...Please, I pray that I can start anew...
Footsteps up the driveway.
...and accept this man for what he is now; not what he’s done...
A knock.
...Amen.
It’s time…

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