Dear Dad,
You slammed me against the wall. You are my father and you slammed me against the wall. A week or two after my 21st birthday. You know you weren’t supposed to do that. I know you weren’t supposed to do that. I think I knew after the fact. I think I knew when you had my hands behind my back and were digging into my skin all wrong. I think I knew when I agreed with you that it was the best decision for me. I think I knew when I laid on a bare old mattress sobbing after you left; scolding myself for ever trusting anyone I loved again. For trusting you could change. For trusting anyone could change.
But I thought I changed? Maybe I was wrong about myself. Maybe I will get to your point. Maybe my controlling coldness will turn to violent madness. Maybe I’ve done all of this work for nothing.
I revise the situation in my head. I hand therapists and professionals the white out, to go over my mistakes, but they leave every word I say. Please at least underline something in red, I want to beg them. I ache to be wrong. Like a hunger I know I will never satisfy. I try to draw maps of the hallway. Like the coach of a sports team. This player's moves don’t make any sense. Every single play is a foul. I’m unfortunately right again. Even when I want to be wrong.
I have humiliatingly posed myself against the emergency room storage closet wall, because the last medical service turned me away for legal liability, and so they took me in there so I could tell them in a breaking voice (not in front of the children with sinus infections and dislocated joints.) what had occurred last week. The nurse’s voice got softer. The doctor was precise and accurate and cold. I think the doctor thought I was hiding more of your hurt. His voice is metallic. But I wonder if he’d go home and it’d haunt him. He had that kind of look to him that people get; when you tell them the truth about people who have hurt you. I used to think it was harsh judgment, I think now I know it's silent sorrow. The X-ray technician gives me cushioning and lets me apologize for taking up space. I mess up and move, and she doesn't scold me, we just do it again and I try not to cry.
Fucked up as it is, some part of me wants to be physically hurt worse.
A contusion doesn't feel dramatic enough. It doesn’t explain the years of emotional pain you have caused me. I can get one of these from slamming on the brakes too fast.
The police disagree with me. They ask me questions and take pictures of bruises that aren’t supposed to be there. One of them is shaped like a thumb print. I’ve had one of those before. It wasn’t from you. I never thought it’d be from you.
They take pictures of my hands and I block your phone number when I get home.
Our last conversation haunts me. I was finally brave enough to confront you, I thought. I told you how you treated me was wrong. You weren’t supposed to lay hands on me, even if you thought I was clinically insane; maybe even especially then.
You offered to check my bruises out and every alarm my body had sounded in my entire being. I’m still glad I declined that.
I tried to reason with you. You called me smug, arrogant, presumptuous. You said I wasn’t supposed to call you a liar, and you told me you’d tried to kill yourself because of me. I ignored that. I asked you why you restrained me, not really processing that my cheek had been pressed to the drywall still. I think I was in shock, even a day later.
The room gets quiet. You start walking towards the other end of the kitchen. You start running at me, full speed; flailing your arms in the air, yelling, and you feign a fall, knocking over the white trashcan.
Once I realize you aren’t going to hurt me, I realize you are mocking me. Even now.
I don’t know if I can do it anymore.
“ Are you mocking me?” I ask, my voice breaking.
I feel ill. I want to die. I want to die. I have never wanted to die more than this moment, and I have wanted to die pretty intensely throughout my life.
You accuse me of misconstruing your words. You were simply showing how insane I was. How someone that catatonic needed to be slammed against the wall.
But I didn’t run yesterday. I didn’t flail. I cried. I screamed. I laughed. I hyperventilated. You looked on with dead eyes. My little brother looked on, with dead eyes. You both watched me, as you both told me my willingness to accept fault was a tactic of manipulation. You called me arrogant and selfish and I wanted to hear you out, because I can be that way sometimes. Maybe there was a lesson here I could learn. But no, even me wanting to change and grow was me “winning” to you. I begged you as I fell to the floor, please don’t make my little brother watch.
Your son snapped at me, and you both jeered. And I sobbed on the hardwood floor. As you towered over me. I put my hands over my head. I prayed for this to be over, but god was nowhere to be found in that house. I closed my eyes. Please. Please. Please.
You robotically told me to get up. You almost forced me up until I screamed at you not to touch me.
Then we “reconciled” as you compared me to all of your past girlfriends who also have my issues. But this isn’t a relationship. You’re my father? I am of you. You are of me. So why have I always had to fulfill the role of wife and daughter at the same time?
And here you are. Mocking me. And laughing in my face, by saying I’m overreacting.
And so I shut off.
You try to “fix” things with me. I want to speak, but I can’t muster any words. I start breathing like I am too cold. I ignore you, and I sit on your old couch. Knees to my chest. You call me irrational. You cry. You scream. You beg.
I want to care. I want so badly to beg for you back, or even logically make a blueprint for how we can reconcile and mend 21 years of screaming and throwing things at me, and punching walls near my head. How many times you’ve called me an asshole and a jackass in public places, and humiliated me in front of my friends. We can reconcile and pay back my mom and stepdad for all of the money you cost them when I had to be put in a mental hospital for a week at age 16. Maybe we could even get back my entire highschool experience, and I could get a 4.0 or 3.5 like all of the rest of my years, and junior year would’ve never happened. And I could get a full ride scholarship to any place I want, and live in a place far off from here where we wouldn't have to have this conversation. Maybe we could make a plan for how you’ll apologize to my mom, for the years of marriage you put her through as a liar and violent man. Maybe you can help me make a plan to apologize to all of the people I’ve hurt, acting the way you do because I didn’t know that it wasn’t okay. Maybe we could make a plan that could’ve saved me from every rock bottom. From every lonely night spent with liquor or medication I’m not supposed to take in that way. Maybe it could've saved me the humiliation of being 6ft tall and angry. Maybe we can make a plan for how I’ll apologize for how cold I’ve been to every family member you’ve turned me against. Maybe we can make a plan to get me to do better in the things I love or loved.
But no. That’s not fair to you, and that’s not fair to me.
So instead my letter is this:
Dear Dad,
I hope your girlfriend left you and you lost your job.
All the best,
Adelaide Burnett