Begging A Father

You never seem to find joy in my existence. Not once have I felt the warmth of your presence… only the cold detachment of someone who merely tolerates me. When you come over, you sink into the glow of a television screen, lost in the endless scroll of your phone. I watch, waiting… hoping for a glance, a word, anything that acknowledges I am here. But I have long since learned that your focus is reserved for anything but me.

When I visit you, it's the same story, just a different backdrop. You always have something more pressing… work that demands your attention, a game you need to play, a show you can’t pause. I sit there, an afterthought in your world, a presence to be endured rather than embraced. It is as if I am an obligation rather than a person, a task to check off your list rather than a child to be cherished.

I have learned to measure time in the seconds you can endure me. Sixty of them, perhaps… on a good day. A single minute where I can sit near you before you shift uncomfortably, before your eyes dart away, before I feel the unspoken truth settle in my chest: you can barely stand me.

The car is the only place where words pass between us. Not because you want them to, but because the obligation of driving somewhere forces the moment upon you. You hate it, though. I can see it in the tension of your hands on the wheel, in the sighs that slip between each strained exchange that you mask as irritation fir other drivers. Whether you are driving to me, from me, or anywhere at all, the destination is always the same… you waiting for the moment you are free of me once more.

And I feel it. I feel the weight of your resentment. You may not hate me… but it's all the same to me… You hate existing with me. You hate my presence. And I, in turn, have learned to hate the way I take up space near you. I have learned that I am a burden. That I am annoying. That I am nothing more than a voice you categorize as complaint, a sound you have long since tuned out.

It has always been this way. Since before memory could solidify into something I could truly understand. Since before I even knew how to name the pain. Before I was six, before I could truly grasp what it meant to be unwanted, I felt it anyway.

Every memory I have of us is the same. A repeating reel of the same desperate plea, the same unanswered question, the same aching hope that this time, you might hear me. That this time, you might see me. I have begged for you to care, begged for you to listen, begged for something I can hold onto. But what is left when pleading turns into an echo? What is left when the same request is met with the same indifference, over and over again?

I don’t know how much longer I can keep asking. I don’t know how many more times I can reach for something that has never been within my grasp. One day, the words will die before they reach my lips. One day, I will choose silence over begging.

And maybe you won’t even notice.