The rest of the beginning.

I want this part to be over. It's tearing me up. Like I said, most parts will be left out. I thought writing about everything would feel like a release, instead it's like opening a still healing wound.

When I was 12 years old, I got a small keyboard for Christmas. I thought I could write a song. All I needed was this 16 inch keyboard, right? Easy peasy. So I wrote one. I can't remember how it went, probably to some nursery rhyme tune or I pressed keys over and over until they sounded good. I remember I would put stickers on the keys to know which one to press next. I never had piano lessons. The title of my song was Daddy's Little Girl. Sadly, I didn't keep it. I threw it away before anyone could read it, but I do remember the chorus and it went "All I ever want in this whole wide world......is to be daddy's little girl."

That's all I wanted. Desperately. Being in the same room with my father was excruciating. I never had a conversation with him and the ones he had with me consisted of yelling or worse. I hated myself. I hated my mom. I hated him. I never wanted to have friends over, I never wanted them to experience what my life was like. I would lie and tell the story of the dad in my head whenever someone was talking about their family. Father's Day was the worse, I had to force myself to make a card that was a complete lie. I had to force myself to wish him a happy day. I had to force myself to smile while listening to what my friends got their dads, what they did, where they went. I felt jealous of my friends that did not have a dad, which is a very sad sentence to type, especially the ones that never knew him. I wish I had never known mine. Living and growing up in a house without love was painful and caused many scars. I dreamed of running away. I dreamed if I died, would they care? Would he? I dreamed of just doing something so bad they would send me away. But my dreams always brought me back to the dad that existed in them. He kept me going. No matter how impossible it seemed, he just had to be true.

I remember in biology class in high school we were doing Punnett Squares. We would diagram recessive and dominate genes to see the chances of having offspring with different/same genes. Curiously I began to map out my father's and mom's traits. Black hair vs light brown hair, brown eyes vs blue eyes, dark skin vs pale skin. I had every recessive trait. I started looking at my father and grandparents and noticed I didn't really look anything like them. I couldn't find any resemblance. I looked at my cousins and uncle, nothing. People always commented about how I looked exactly like my mom. There were never any comments made about how I looked like my father. For the first time, I felt like somewhere I had another family. How, I wasn't sure, because I have baby photos of me with my father, just a couple. Did he know? Did anyone know? Was this just another wishful thinking I was desperately trying to make happen and grab onto any possibility it was true?

And then...my mom had another baby.