“For every father who steps out to get a pack of cigarettes, never to be heard of again, there is a child who grows up with an inerasable sense of abandonment, despite any success they may achieve in life. I hope it was worth the smoke, you deadbeat motherfucker.” ~ Beryl Dov, 50 Shades of Green: Poems and Aphorisms about Time, Aging and Childhood
I cannot know how she is feeling because I grew up with both my father and mother. I saw her crying in her room last Friday and when I asked her what was wrong, she said that it was the night of the father and daughter dance at school, and she said that she had been dodging questions from her classmates as to the whereabouts of where her father is.
She knows where her father is. He is in Brooklyn, less than ten miles away from where we are. He has never made attempts to see her. Prior to the new year, she even sent him a "friend" request on a social media site. Not only did he not accept her request, he even took the extra step to block her.
She cries, not because she longs for him, but because she cannot understand why her own father, her own flesh and blood, wants nothing to do with her.
I cannot understand it either.
