I am a girl whose personality is split in two.  There is the girl I am at home, and then there is the girl that the rest of the world gets to know.  At home, I try my best to keep to myself, hoping not to anger anyone or cause any extra stress on my mom.  I try to be more bubbly when I’m out and about. I want people to see the perky me, see the girl who wants to make the world a little bit brighter.  But on the inside, I am anxious and scared all the time.

At the ripe old age of 11, I came to the realization that my father was an alcoholic. I figured everyone’s parents fought, but I never knew what my parents were fighting about.  Turns out, it was mostly my dad doing the fighting. Screaming about how my mother must be cheating on him or how he shouldn’t have to go to work if he doesn’t want to, even though he never held a job longer than a couple of weeks. When I was younger I never actually listened to what they were arguing about, but the older I became the more I understood.

       So as I grew, and became more acquainted with Google, I started to get an idea of what was going on with my dad. When he went away, I knew that rehab is where he was headed. I barely even remember him leaving as a kid, but as I became a teenager I vividly remember him being gone. He missed the end of my 8th grade year all the way up until a couple of weeks before sophomore year. He missed my hospitalization for a blood clot. My first day of high school. My first boyfriend. My first high school dance. He could only come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and honestly, I didn’t mind him being away because I knew he was getting sober. But that changed quickly.

       About two months before he was supposed to be out of rehab, my dad came home. All his advisors told him that he needed to stay the last two months, but legally they couldn’t keep him, so he got on a plane and left Tennessee. I think my mom missed him so much that she wasn’t even mad that he skipped out on the last of his treatment. Even I was happy to finally have him home. I thought he’d be a new dad. A sober man who would actually have time to do things with me. Not that he ever noticed what I needed. The way I looked at him really changed in the weeks after he came home.

       Four days later, on the dot, I came home from a friend’s house to find my dad asleep on the couch. It was a chilly afternoon, and I just figured he was taking a nap. I went to my room and put on a movie. Evidently that was too loud for him.  He came stomping down the hall, yelling. He burst into my room screaming, saying I was an ungrateful child who needed to learn not to be such a pain. He said his life would be easier if I just never existed at all. He told me he didn’t care if I left and never came back. I was so freaked out that I just sat on my bed and let him yell at me for things I didn’t understand. When I finally come too, I did exactly what he told me to do - I ran away. It took him almost two hours to even notice I was gone.

       The problem continued to grow in the next couple of years, until one day, he took things too far. My parents were fighting, presumably about how drunk my father was, how he had quit his job yet again, and continued to drink away what money we had.  My mother let out a shrill scream and i darted out of my room. I burst into the kitchen to find my father shoving my mother up against our back door. His arm was against her throat. I remember the back porch lights illuminating his face and how my mother’s staticky hair clung to the glass door. I screamed for him to stop. There was a tense moment before he finally stepped back. He stood there staring at my mother, before he pushed passed me and out the door. My mother just rushed into her room. She didn’t come out the rest of the night.

       I didn’t see him again for several days, but it was too late. I told my school counselor and things escalated from there. Child protective services was called and  I wasn’t allowed to be alone with my father for several months, which was fine by me. My mother never told her side of the family and my father’s side only knew because someone had to take care of him while my mother tried to put our lives back together. But he wrecked me. Even if my mother could pretend nothing happened, I never could. I still can’t look at him without seeing him pinning my mother against our back door. I’ve never been more terrified of anything in my entire life. No child should be most terrified of the man who is supposed to protect them.

       I know people say that holding grudges only hurts you, and that my resenting my father is only going to end badly for me, but I can’t help it. When I look at him all I see is the childhood I didn’t have, the childhood he threw in the gutter. I see a man who made me care so little for myself that sometimes I can’t breathe when I think about it. I have to act like i’m a happy perky person for the sake of everyone else but inside I feel like i’m dying. I know my father would never intentionally make me feel this way, but he did.

       You did dad. You made me feel like I was nothing, and I had to learn how to build myself back up. And I don’t need you. I don’t think I ever really did, not with the state you’re constantly in. But you’re here and I can’t change that. I can’t change who you are, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept it. That doesn’t mean I have to act like everything is fine. Because it’s not. And it never will be.