To The Father I Never Had
On absence, quiet rage, and the music that still found me.
There have only been a handful of times when I’ve truly felt your absence.
It’s in the quiet moments - a little girl on her dad’s shoulders, walking hand in hand, being pushed on a swing set. Face lit up like a Christmas tree.
That simple, beautiful joy of spending time with the man who makes you feel safest.
What must that feel like?
(Artwork Source: Pinterest)
It’s strange, how you can miss someone you never really knew. Or maybe it’s that, I miss the memories I never got to make.
I grew up loved. I felt nurtured in the ways that mattered most. But even so, there are absences that no amount of love can fully fill. And questions I can’t help but ask sometimes.
Do you ever think of me? Do I cross your mind when milestones happen in your world? Birthdays, weddings, grandchildren? Do you wonder who the timid three year old little girl turned into, when you look at your other children?
I’ll never know.
It’s complicated, thinking of you.
Sometimes there’s anger. A sharp, protective fire. I wonder if you know how deeply your absence shaped my views on love and trust, especially with men. How it planted a quiet doubt in my mind that no matter how good something is - it could still end. There could always be lies. Someone could still walk away.
I brace for impact. In healthy relationships, or just happy situations in general - I am constantly waiting for the bubble to burst. And I hate that I’m like that, but it’s just an automatic state of mine.
I think I’ve been shaped by the choices you made - ones I was far too young to understand at the time. And somewhere along the way, I started to believe that staying guarded was the only way to keep myself safe.
So I did.
There’s one part of me that’s the biggest hopeful romantic.
The kind who still believes in the magic of early stages of love, in being chosen and cherished and celebrated. The falling in love chapters have always been my favourite to live through.
But there’s another part, more hardened. Logical. Quietly convinced that most good things fade, and most people leave. Love rarely lasts forever. Sometimes, the worst does happen.
So I stay just detached enough to be mentally ready for that day, in case it comes around.
So I can be somewhat prepared enough to not break down and crumble.
So I can pick myself up and independently keep going, unwaveringly strong and stoic.
You are the reason for that half.
I don’t know the full story between you and my mother. I only know fragments. And I know pain — hers, mine, some I can’t even name.
Maybe you had reasons. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you tried. Maybe you vanished.
I’ll never know.
I’m 30 now. All I have of you is a name, rumours of your musical talents, and a silence that echoes through certain parts of me.
Sometimes, I feel nothing when I think of you. But when it does hurt, it’s not because of milestones missed - not entirely. What aches most is the music we could have made together.
Because music is my first love. My truest language. I sing. I play. I write. I’ve performed to thousands. I’ve poured every version of myself into sound.
Music is the place where I feel safest.
It’s the only thing that’s ever just clicked — the only thing that’s always made sense.
It is my therapy, my religion, my way of breathing.
Music runs through my veins because of you.
I wonder sometimes, if you would be proud of me. Not just as your daughter, but as the artist I’ve become.
Because music is the one thing that connects me to you in a way I never asked for, but quietly hold close. It’s in my bones. And I know it came from you.
And because of that, despite everything else - I feel a frustrating love for you. A love for what you gave me, even without being there to give it.
(Artwork Source: Pinterest)
I mourn the things you never got to show me. The things I never got to show you.
The melodies we never wrote. The harmony we never tried.
The stages you’ll never see me on. Radiant, alive, completely in my element.
That’s what hurts most.
Not just your absence, but the loss of what we could’ve shared, the bond we would’ve built through sound and song.
I’m still angry at you for robbing us both of that.
Of all the creative flowers that might have bloomed between us.
You could have been the one standing just offstage, watching me shine. And you would’ve been the one person in my life who truly understood the magnitude of that joy - because I know, deep down, music was your language too. Your lifeline.
So - to the father I never really had,
The first heartbreak I never signed up for,
And the man I’ll probably never meet:
I miss you.
I hate you.
I love you.