I'm your oldest daughter, your first born, and I love you...or at least I did. As a little girl I would wait for you by the door, excited when you would come home from work and tell me silly jokes. You would watch TV with me and on my birthday take me to Toys R Us and let me pick whichever Barbie doll I wanted for my birthday. You were the best and when teachers would ask me if I was daddy's little girl I'd say yes.
But when you drank beer and downed one right after the other you started to change. You would scream and yell, break and throw things. You would pick fights with my mom and say "have you cheated on me?" "you're a fucking slut" "you fat bitch" and then you would hit my poor mom in the face. You didn't care if me and my siblings were screaming, crying, yelling "Dad stop hurting mom!" you'd keep hitting her until you drew blood.
Your eyes, bloodshot and dark, looked like bottomless pits...you have no heart. You'd spit at my mom and say "Look at the mess you made, it's all your fault that the kids are crying" then, you'd walk away, slam the door, and return hours later.
Tension from the previous night carried over into the next day, walking on eggshells having to watch what we said or did for fear of what you'd do next if we upset you. Fear, that's what we all felt.
Daddy, I was 5 years old. I shouldn't have had to worry about whether or not you were going to hit mom again, all I should have been worrying about is whether or not my crayons needed sharpening.
You think I liked having to stand in between you and mom to keep you from hitting her? Do you think I liked having to hear you ask mom the same question every day "Have you cheated on me?" Any sudden movement would scare me, I was always on edge because at any given moment you could go off.
Dad, I was 8 years old, why'd I have to act like an adult? I would take my younger siblings into a room and close the door just to keep them from listening to the arguments and keep them from seeing what you were doing to mom. You might not have cared about us but I did.
What I needed, what we needed, was a father but we never got one. We got a drunk instead.