Dear Dad,
It’s me, Evelyn. Can you see my face? I can barely see yours. It hurts too much. To see your crinkly crow’s feet. Crooked front tooth. Pinky twitching on the steering wheel when you’re upset. That’s what I remember. I am frozen in those moments. I am frozen inside, Dad.
I have a rage inside of me that could sear mountain ranges, slice them in half. So I’ve build glaciers on top of it, frozen frosted blue lips. I have grown up now, Dad. Grown up too hard, and too soft. And not at all.
I have not let a single man close to my heart. No fucking way. I am still reeling from your betrayal, from your choices. And mine. But you’ve been betraying me since as far back as I can remember. All those nights you worked late. You worked on numbing your soul with Johnny Walker. You couldn’t bear to watch Mom bruise our tender flesh. The day you told me, the first glacier began to grow. I couldn’t bear my hate. That’s when I tried my first drugs, Dad. I wanted to feel nothing, just like you. I did whatever I could get my hands on. Smoked it, snorted it, ate it, swallowed it. I would have fucked too, if I had the balls.
My first sexual experience? So ignorant. So unaware. The only thing I knew about men then was that they lied. They lied, they couldn’t protect me, they ran away when things got hard. He fingered me while I was sleeping. I was too high to feel anything. He died anyway, Dad.
I could never grab onto you. I could never know you, understand you. Your body was there but you were already living on some alien planet. I’ve grown up to believe that no man will ever have my back. That he won’t want to hold my hand through my pain. That I will forever be too much. That I’ll have to practically kill and main to make myself heard, to be important. That he’ll disappear into the night. That long, philosophical conversations will be the only way to connect, unless I just give him my body. That he doesn’t feel anything, doesn’t want to feel anything, that I will always make him feel what he doesn’t want to.
Just like you, Dad. Just like you. Just like you.
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