I’m writing to you as I feel it’s been quite a while since we last spoke (two years to be exact, you hung up on me). So how is Germany? How old are your other children now? What have you been up to this year? I finished my A-levels this summer. But enough small talk. On our mammoth European road trip in the summer, the journey took us close to your house and I asked Mum and my stepdad if we could take a detour so that I could see you. Outside your house, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of the car and knock on the door.
How did we get into this situation? I sat there, an outsider, watching your house through disappointed eyes.
Now the what-ifs run through my mind: what if I had knocked on the door? Would you have let me in? Or would you have left me hovering outside, exchanging empty words without saying anything real?
What I need is a father, not chitchat and someone who shuts the door on me when the truth gets too much.
I’ve tried so many different forms of communication – email, the phone and I also suggested Skype. Yet I still can’t get through to you.
My mum, stepdad and I sat around the table trying to work out why I had felt unable to knock on your door that day. At last it came to me. I think, perhaps subconsciously, I was saving myself the grief of your response.
Why can’t your parental obligations stretch to all three of your children, not just your two recent ones? You can’t seem to grasp my feelings of frustration about wanting to talk about the past. In our previous conversations, which ended abruptly, as your older son needed to be put to bed, I’d ask you how he was doing at school etc, and you’d talk about the weather. No one listening in would be able to tell there was any difference between our relationship and one you might have with a neighbour.
Forget your excuses – that the flight to visit me is expensive and that you need to look after your other children (I hope you can see the irony in that). While you watch their school plays, don’t you consider that I would have liked you to be there at mine? Or to see me glammed up before my prom? Couldn’t I be included in your family?
According to Mum, I make similar jokes to yours and I try to swallow the lump in my throat when she laughs and says I’ve inherited my sense of humour from you. Maybe she does it to keep alive the connection to the slight relationship that exists between us.
Perhaps the reason I didn’t knock on your door was that I just don’t care any more. If someone doesn’t believe in me, I lose the will to believe in them. I’m exhausted trying to make this work. Maybe a part of me wasn’t actually bothered whether I saw you or not that day – you’ve already lost so much meaning in my life; you are somone who sends me a birthday card.
You haven’t given me much to hold on to. Perhaps the light had been dimming for a long time and it is only now that I realise the light is turned off. With you living in another country, maybe we never had a chance to build a relationship. So is it safe to say let’s call it a day? Clearly you can’t give me what I need and I’m actually doing perfectly well with Mum and my stepdad.
This isn’t me being bitter, although I was initially. It’s just a way of telling you how I really feel without being dismissed.
Phoebe
