I never had it rough as far as life went.
But when it came to a father’s love, I just…never had it.
I don’t want to feel sorry for myself.
But just for a few seconds, I do. I mourn that girl who grew up knowing she was an obligation.
A low-lying simmering anger trickles into my subconscious. I lift to sit on the edge of the bed as it starts to engulf me whole.
Fuck them all.
All of them.
I wasted my heart—wholly, completely. I wasted it, and it will never be mine again. I’ll never be whole.
I want to take back the years I spent hoping and praying for some returned affection. For the days and nights, and years, and months and hours and minutes, I questioned myself, my existence, and lost myself in them all.
I resent my father and my love for him.
I resent the men who made me.
I wish I never met any of them.
“FUCK YOU!”
In a burst of anger, I clear off the top of Roman’s dresser scattering mail and his cologne bottles.
Just as fast as it comes, it ebbs, but it’s there, it’s always been there, my pride, my self-respect, all that I had put aside just to give my fucking a heart a chance.
And for what?
I’m a lover who got nothing in return but a broken heart and tattered self-image. I betrayed myself for the chance of being loved.
“No more! No more!”
It was never worth it.
But I am. I am worth it.
I didn’t ask him for anything, but why did he have to make it so fucking painfully clear that he didn’t love me?
I’m the daughter of no one.
How c
ould my mother love a man so cruel?
How could I follow in her footsteps and fall for a like-minded man, whose agenda, role in life came first over my affection?
Money. Power. I’d give it all up just to make myself whole again.
The smell of cologne permeates the room, and I open one of the windows before I kneel to pick up the glass from the broken bottle. I open his bedside drawer to place the pieces in and see a letter resting underneath a watch box. I study the thick envelope and pull it from beneath the box. The note atop of it is addressed to me.
Cecelia,
I’m everything your eyes accused me of being. You were better off.
Forgive me,