Daddy Dearest.

I've waited for this for a long time. To pen down these words. Type them out when I could think clearly and recollect everything that has happened. Maybe there are certain things I shouldn't recollect. Forget them, and erase them and more than everything else, forgive you.
It's Ironic. I shouldn't be writing about you papa. All these years I've hidden it from the world, but now and today I lost all sense of everything. It's like a cycle, everyday of our lives. Maybe that's why nothing seems so tough anymore, because everyday the three of us are battling internally with the most important man in our life. One 45, one 20 and One tenderly 10. And everyday is a new challenge for us, against you. We're stopping our tears from falling through the day, but we know when it will eventually fall, our pillows will be soaked in salty stains.
One simple question: what have we done to deserve this? What grave sin did anyone of us commit that one day of peace and happiness feels like a drop of rain in a drought. Why papa? I want to know how it feels to WANT to come back home. For once. Just to experience that life. Just once.
I keep thinking that there are positives coming out of this. Because that's the way I've been brought up you see, to find the positive in every situation. After 20 years of this, I think I'm finally ready to move forward from this. The questions in my mind will always be questions. But I've learnt that sometimes, your questions don't get answered and they never will.

So this is for you daddy dearest, a culmination of good bad and the ugly. Thank you for those valuable lessons. I'm forever indebted.
Thank you for always giving me the hard cold truth and not fluffing it up- because that's how life is, without any frills hard and cold. And it's never rainbows and butterflies, its ALWAYS compromise. I know that now.
Thank you for not picking me up as a child when I cried- because from then I've learnt that no one will ever be by my side when I'm Crying, its my battle and mine alone.
Thank you for the way you treated us- so now I know how I must not be treated my entire life. And so I know what is right and what wrong.
Thank you for the words- because now no matter what anyone says, I've always heard worse. From the place closest to my heart. So bring it on world, your insults will bounce off.
Thank you for not coming to see me perform- I stopped expecting after a while, and that reduced disappointments. Now whatever good happens, happens as a surprise.
Thank you for not pampering me like other fathers do- because now I'm tough, more than a man. And unafraid.
Thank you for chiding me when I cried- because that made me want to be strong in your eyes. And I stopped the tears.
Thank you for showing me through your actions, that I could trust no man, they'd all just give up or not try in the first place. Thank you papa, because I think I'm incapable of loving a man and have him love me back.

And many More things. My head isn't clear as it was in the beginning. It's shadowed with too many memories.

My eyes are stinging with the tears that I've cried tonight and for these twenty years. They sting with the pain that my mother and baby sister have felt because of you. But I have to be strong for them. And I will.. Because you never have.

I look at the girls who's fathers adore them, treat them like princesses and hold like gentle pearls in the palm of their hands and I wonder why everyone wasn't blessed with that kind of luck. I'd like to be someone's little girl. I'd like to light up someone's world too. I just haven't got the chance.
And God, if you're listening, I'd like this a little less for myself and a little more for the little girl who is afraid of men and needs to bloom. Also for the lady who's gone through 24 years of this, one beacon of hope? Just one. Until then we'll wait. Like we always have. In a our group hug of three people, we'd like you to join papa, someday. And we'll hope for that someday everyday of our lives papa, every morning is a new start after all.