You were always there, physically. In the living room, watching the news. At the dinner table, silent. Outside on the veranda, smoking with your thoughts. You weren’t absent like the fathers I’d hear about on TV, you paid the bills, fixed the car, locked the gate. You did your job. You were there.
But you weren’t with me.
You never really looked at me when I spoke. Not really. I could have been a ghost with good grades. I remember once getting a distinction in a subject I hated just to see if you’d say something. You nodded. Went back to your newspaper.
I tried to crack your silence. Tried to be funny. Tried to be smart. Tried to be invisible. I tried every version of myself hoping one would be enough to make you… soften. Ask me how I was, not what I’d done.
The hardest part is that I can’t say you were cruel. You weren’t. But love shouldn’t feel like a performance review.
I know now, as an adult, that you probably carried your own quiet griefs. That maybe no one ever asked you how you were, either. Maybe being stoic was your version of love. Maybe vulnerability wasn’t passed down to you, so how could you pass it to me?
But still
I needed more.
And that gap between us? I’ve learned to call it grief.
I love you, Dad. I really do.
I just wish I’d met the version of you who could love me out loud.
—Your Daughter