(17, NJ, USA) Anonymous - Father

How do you cope when your first heartbreak isn’t your high school boyfriend? Or your best friend? Or getting rejected from your dream college? How do you cope when your first heartbreak is the man who gave you life, who, on paper, was supposed to be your hero? It’s been a decade and I still go over those questions daily. I’ve discovered there's no romcom to comfort me, to make me feel less alone in the deafening absence of a man who I know should be there. There's no amount of chocolate ice cream to cry over to fill the void of fatherly love. Since a young age I’ve been told I have an “impressive level of emotional intelligence”, well what else are you supposed to develop at age 8 when you have to try to compute the level of narcissism it takes to mold a man like your father. I wish I could say I hate him, I really do, but how could I hate a man who gave me the greatest gift of all? How could I hate a man who taught me the most valuable life lesson? Every blow out fight, every tear, every broken glass, they birthed a girl who would come to learn that you can only try so much to make someone love you and you can only try so hard to keep loving someone so hollow.