Dear Dad,

I just want you to know that I hate you, I have feelings of hate towards you. That fact makes me feel guilty because I am a human. I think about you coming home from work to an empty house, I think about you eating dinner alone, and that makes me cry.
Do you think about me? Do you cry when you think of me hanging about with my friends that you don’t know? Do you think about me getting home from work and being greeted by my loving mother? Do you feel pain when you think about how your only daughter has a completely separate life that you will never know about? I don’t think you care. I think you only care about how it makes you look when your children don’t speak to you, if you are divorced, if you’re a dead beat dad.
I feel pain for you because I am a person with compassion and empathy. I am a funny person, I am a smart person. I feel hate towards you because I can be all of these things and still not be good enough for you to pick up the phone for. As your daughter I needed you to love me, but as a woman I need for you to not exist. You cannot exist anymore because I can’t live another year being depressed around the holidays because all I’ve ever wanted for Christmas was a father figure and Santa never pulled through.
I have all of this pain in my body and I don’t know what to do with it. I have this surplus of pain where all of my love should be. I have to get it outside of my body, it’s inside of me eating me from the inside out. I hate myself because I’ve hated you.
Your ever so doting daughter, Madison