I have not posted the last several days. I started a post or two but never really got much done. The thing is, I have been hurting. Pretty bad actually. And I am not sure how to not hurt. It seems strange but for some reason I am afraid to put it into words. But here it is, I miss her. I am fighting with myself wondering if I have any right to miss her. I was never her father. I was never her dad. I was not there all the time and there was a lot of times I should have been there and I wasn’t. I regret that so much. I tried to make big gestures sometimes like driving to Pennsylvania to get her and her brother or driving to Indian to do the same. I would have done anything to keep her safe but sometimes I put the physical and mental health of Wesley and myself first and walked away. I always loved her. I loved her from the day I first saw her when she was born in that hospital. I loved her when I was taking care of her and her brothers after working a night shift at Wal-Mart in Indiana. I remember walking behind one of the baseball fields and having someone suddenly jump on my back. I gently pulled them off and there she was and I was so happy to see her. There have been so many times that she has brought me joy. I am not sure I ever had the right to have that joy. Now, for reasons I am not generally privy to, I never get to talk to her. I never get to see her. She isn’t really responding to my messages. She has a lot going on in her life, I get that. Her dad is back, and no matter what anyone might think, I am glad for that. I know that makes her happy. She has had so many people step out of her life it is nice I am sure to have someone that was gone to step in again and fill a hole that she never wanted to admit existed. But ever since he got out, she has not really come around at all. Everything just changed.
Not every day hurts. It comes and it goes but this last couple of weeks it just keeps coming back around. I am just sad. I just want to know that she is ok. I want to know that if I have done something wrong what it was so maybe I can fix it. She has always been in my heart but now it just feels like she is gone And now that she is gone, I have a hole in me. And that hole is wide and it is deep and sometimes looking into that hole brings me such despair and regret. I have to learn to let her go to be her own thing. I have to hope that she knows that even if an infinite number of years were to pass without us speaking, I will still be there if she needs me. I may not be her dad. She may not be my daughter. But I love her as if she was and I miss her as if my daughter was gone. This will not be an easy thing to learn to deal with. But I will keep trying. Until then……..