Dear dad,



Thanks for your advice. I had no idea that our bathroom cabinet held the escape to all the pain and problems. Dad, you remembered my first painting I gifted to you on father’s day when I was 8? And you scowled and said, “That’s an ugly crocodile, my dear!”, and I smiled broadly and thanked. It was a frog, dad. I was ecstatic because u said ‘my dear’. You don’t even know what subjects I have in school, let alone what I wanna be when I grow up (but that won’t be a problem anymore, because I am not growing up).
Dad, I am not complaining. Nor am I ungrateful to you. I do care about the huge bundles of notes you spent on me, the beautiful dresses you bought me from Chanel, the extravagant food you fed me, the lavish lifestyle you provided me with, the invisible love you showered me with. I care, dad, only if u had known how much. I care about you and mom, more than anything in the world, more than myself. I want to pay you back, make you proud of me. But dad, I can’t. I can’t win a scholarship to Harvard and study in biotechnology, like my brother, Charles did. I will just end up disappointing you. I really don’t want to do that. I always feel so helpless, dad. I suck at everything, even showing my feelings. I can never prove it to you that how much I love you and how much I crave you to be proud of me, like you are of Charles. I want you to put your arms around me and brag about me to your friends like you did when Charles got all As in his A levels. Except that never happened, and never will. So, I stopped dreaming.
Dad, I am not a spoilt teenager. I care about you guys, it’s just that I can’t express myself. Hey, I inherited that from you. But you can at least express when you are drunk every night, I can’t even do that. You know, whenever I try to share my feelings, it backfires and ends up hurting me, along with your sentiments. Dad, I know you always thought I hated you, but I can never hate you; there will always be respect, admiration, and love for you. I so wish I could tell you these properly, but your daughter is so weak, dad. Along with maths, she is weak in expressing emotions. I am a quitter, dad. I cannot race with the ‘great intellectuals’ like my brother, my genius classmate, Rita. Dad, you remember the night when you returned home at 1 am, and I refused to open the door unless you quit drinking, and you hit me and broke my nose? I hated my broken nose at first, but when you said sorry and kissed on my broken nose, I liked my nose from then. And dad, I just wanted you safe. I saw this TV program where people died due to drinking. I don’t want you to die, dad. I don’t want you to leave me.
I am really ashamed of myself, dad. I know I hurt you today, disappointed you with my results. But you won’t understand me. You never did. You never will. It’s impossible (though my friend says, “impossible is nothing, but this is humanly impossible. But I hope the letter helps you, dad). I don’t blame you; no one in this world will understand me. Like my friend says, I am ‘inscrutable’, so true. But I do have feelings, dad. The way I behave towards you, it seems alien even to my own eyes. I don’t want to be so rude, trust me. I am still shocked how I could cross you. I want to mean something, but I say something opposite. I screw things up. I just wanna say, I am sorry, dad. I am still 15, dad, still a kid. Won’t you forgive your kid? Please? I am not mad at you for scolding me or telling me to kill myself. I know how worthless I have proved myself to be. I am a failure, I know, dad. I can never make you feel like Charles did. I have nothing to give you, dad, except this letter. But I want you to know that I love you, dad. You daughter loves you a lot, and wants you to be happy, always, even when I am not around.
Love, your one and only daughter.
P.S- Dad, your liquor cabinet will not be missing bottles anymore … sorry, dad…