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“Any man can be a father.  It takes someone special to be a dad.”  Technically speaking, your father is the one who gave you twenty-three chromosomes.  From him, you get your eye color, your blood type, your sense of humor, your height.  Half of your genetic makeup is from him.  Your father is part of who you are.  But your dad is different than your father.  Your dad is the one who raises you into the person you’ve become.  He teaches you to ride a bike, builds you a dollhouse, plays checkers with you, and walks you down the aisle at your wedding.  Your dad loves you, cares for you and wants nothing but the best for you.  He knows your strengths and your weaknesses, your likes and your dislikes, your favorite foods, your best friends, your hobbies.  He involves himself in your life; cheering you on at soccer games, building your science fair project with you, interrogating your boyfriends, helping you on your algebra homework.  He’s someone you look up to, trust, go to for advice and confide in.  At least, that’s the ideal situation.  That’s what we want, what we all hope for, but it’s not always what we get.

            My parents divorced when I was three.  I don’t ever remember a time when they were together.  I live with my mom and I used to visit my dad every other weekend.  Now I don’t have the time so I only see him every couple months.
           My dad is a great guy.  He’s easy to get along with and has a great sense of humor.  He’s also a very kind-hearted, loving person.  Unless you’re his kid, that is.  He’s a great person, but a not so great dad.
            I love my dad as a person, as a friend.  I can remember many car rides with him, talking, singing along with the radio and playing twenty questions.  It’s a three hour ride to his house, so when I would visit him every other weekend, we would be stuck in the car together, along with my brother.  We made the best of it; he would tell us jokes and stories and make us laugh until soda shot out of our noses.  Even now when we spend the occasional car ride together, we have a fun time, joking and laughing.
            But as a dad, as a person to nurture me, teach me and protect me, I sort of hate him.  I know hate is a powerful and harsh word, a sin.  But he’s never really given me any reason to love him for being my dad.  He’s never been there for me, to support me.  He doesn’t care about me.  Not the way a parent is supposed to care about their child.  He doesn’t even know me.  He thinks he does, but really, he has no idea who I am as an individual.  He doesn’t know my beliefs, my opinions, my values or my passions.  I’m sure he doesn’t even know my favorite food or what kind of music I listen to.  Every so often he calls me to ask how I’m doing and how school’s going.  He thinks that by doing this, he knows who I am.  He thinks this counts as us having a typical father-daughter relationship.
        I’ve never been able to depend on him for anything.  There are some things that seem minuscule and unimportant but can be really upsetting.  Like when he says he’ll call me and he doesn’t.  It’s not as if we have significant conversations or talk about anything of substance.  It’s just the fact that he doesn’t keep his word.  There have been countless instances where he told me he would call me, and he never did.  I’ve learned now that when he says he’ll call, he’s not going to.  But when I was little, I believed him.  I thought he would call.  I would wait for him to call.  And every time he didn’t, I would sit and wonder why.
        For the longest time, I convinced myself that he was swamped at work, or that there was some sort of crisis that had come up.  I wanted to think that there was a reason simply because I wasn’t willing to believe that he didn’t want to talk to me.  But I figured out a while ago that there is no excuse.  He doesn’t call because he doesn’t want to call.  He doesn’t want to talk to me.  That’s fine.  What’s not fine is that he pretends he wants to talk.  He says he’s going to call.  And then he doesn’t.
        The thing that’s the most upsetting is that he makes no effort to have a strong relationship with me or my brother.  He does, however, have solid relationships with both of my stepsisters.  He was with them when they went to prom, when they brought home their first boyfriends, when got their drivers licenses and on their eighteenth birthdays.  I’m lucky if he even remembers to call on my birthday.  It’s not like I think that they shouldn’t have a good relationship with him.  They should; he’s their stepdad.  But he’s my dad.  So why do they have a better relationship with him than I do?
        I’ve spent hours wondering why he puts forth effort to have a relationship with them, but not with his own kids.  It hurts to think that he would rather be their dad than mine; that he finds it more fulfilling and rewarding to be there for them.  He seems to be the perfect father for them and gives the impression that he loves every minute of it.  What makes them more worthy of his care, his love and his time?  I don’t understand this, and I don’t know that I ever will.
        If you were to ask my dad about his relationship with his daughter, I’m sure he would feed you a line about how we’re close, we talk, have a great relationship and do all sorts of father daughter things.  But deep down, I think he knows how awful he treats me.  He knows I deserve better.  He has to know.  He can’t think that the way he treats me is okay.  But it seems to me that he thinks that if he pretends our relationship is perfect, then I’ll be under the impression that our relationship is perfect.  He’s completely oblivious to the fact that I hate our relationship.
        It’s crossed my mind to bring it up to him.  To ask him why he treats me the way he does, what I did to deserve this.  But it wouldn’t do any good.  He would deny the hell out of it and say that he didn’t realize I felt this way.  He would tell me that I had hurt his feelings by telling him how I feel and that he didn’t know that his actions were hurting me this much.  He would make me the bad guy.  He’d somehow convince me that he never meant to treat me this way.  He’d make me feel bad for accusing him.  It would only make things worse between us and it would be my fault for bringing it up.  I’m not willing to put what little relationship we do have in jeopardy.
        I know he loves me.  I’m his daughter.  But he doesn’t love me like he should.  I’ve spent countless hours wondering what I did wrong, what I did to deserve to be mistreated and neglected.  I’ve shed many tears, crying because I just want him to be my dad.  For so long, I wished for the picture perfect dad; the one who shows off pictures of his daughter at work, who brags about how smart she is and has a perfect relationship with her.  Part of me still hopes for it, but I know that it won’t happen.  I know that he will never change and things will never get better between us.  I’ve accepted that this is the way it’s going to be.  But I still don’t understand why he acts as if I’m nonexistent and why he refrains from involving himself in my life.  His actions and his ways don’t make any sense to me, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that there’s nothing I can do about it.
           Sometimes, when I think about our relationship and how he treats me, I get really angry.  I know that I have done nothing wrong and that I’ve never done anything to deserve this.  He chooses to treat me like this.  He has made our relationship what it is.  It’s upsetting to think that he’s decided to act this way.  That it doesn’t matter to him that we have a horrible relationship.  That he’s so caught up in other things that are more important to him, he doesn’t even see how bad our relationship is.
        When I was younger, my mom would always comment about my dad, dropping hints about how he’s a bad father and how he doesn’t really care about me.  I didn’t want to accept that.  No eight-year-old wants to believe that her father has no interest in her or her life.  I wanted to think that my dad was like my friend’s dads.  The ones who packed their kid’s lunch and took them camping in the summer.  But over the years, I’ve come to realize that my mom was right.
        My dad’s never been there to support me, care for me, protect me or even have a meaningful conversation with me.  I used to try to convince myself that he was there for me and that he was a good dad to me.  I’ve come to realize that that isn’t true.  As great as it would be to have a perfect dad and have a perfect relationship with him, I know it won’t happen and I’m okay with that.  I used to think that I needed my dad in my life to guide me and be there for me.  I’ve learned that I don’t need him.  Not having him be a part of my life hasn’t held me back at all.  Without him there to teach me or care for me, I’ve become a strong-willed, motivated and confident individual.  I’ve strived to reach my goals, I’ve overcome obstacles, I’ve had academic success, I’ve developed strong beliefs and I’ve made many accomplishments.  I’m proud of the person I have become without him.