Daddy

I wrote you letters one year, after spending days looking up people with your name, getting the addresses and taking a big breath. I thought out my words carefully, wanting it to sound right, wanting the words to draw out some instinct in you to want to meet me. 

Dear Sir (how could I ever call you daddy, a word so foreign on my lips), 

My name is Michelle. From what my mom told, you were the other half of how I came to be. I never met you. I heard you met me once. I was a newborn, so the memory is not one that we share. But knowing that always made me think that maybe, just maybe, you did want to know me. So I am writing to say hello and introduce myself to you.

You'd be proud of me, the woman I have become. I was a wife and I am a mother. I am told I look like you, which bothered me since I always seemed to look so different from my siblings. My mom always told me I had your build: kind of short, thicker thighs. But she also told me stories of how you met, on the dance floor. And I guess that's where I get my love of dancing from. However, I know you both won contests whereas I am more clumsy. But I still have fun. 

Did that come from you as well? 

My siblings were more athletic while I was the bookworm. If someone couldn't find me right away, they knew to find a secluded spot and I'd be curled up with my latest book. My mom was a reader, so I'm sure that came from her. But were you as well?

The fact is, it takes two halves to make a whole. Even if you walked away, scared or spineless, whichever it was, you are part of the reason I am who I am. Can you fault me for wanting to put the pieces together? 

I only wanted to know where the parts of me that don't fit in came from. They had to come from you. I want nothing from you but the rest of the puzzle. 

I'm intelligent and curious. There is truly not enough ever to learn in this world. I'm outgoing but also shy, very shy. I also have a wicked sense of humor and a heart of gold. I don't show the heart part too much. That's where I am more inward and cautious. 

When things got hard or I got hurt, I had moments of anger. I cannot lie. Anger that maybe, just maybe, if I had had a daddy, he (you?) would have protected me. But that never happened and I abandoned fantasies of Knights in Shining Armor at a very young age. I've probably always been too realistic for my own good. My mom was more of a dreamer; I am more of a thinker and a doer. Did that come from you? Or did it come from you not being here. 

Sometimes, when in a crowded place, I find myself seeking out your face in the crowd. But such foolishness there since I don't know your face. I guess a part of me always figured that if I did ever find you, I would just know. 

But yes, I wrote you letters, many letters. Some came back with beautiful replies from men with your name but no connection to me. One came back: Return to Sender. I always thought that was maybe you. Or maybe it was a young woman, embarking on a new life with a new family, wanting to somehow fill in the holes. 

After those letters yielded nothing, I gave up the idea of finding you. I always figured if I wanted to bad enough, it would happen. That's how I see the world: Effort yields Results. I think I stopped out of fear: fear of being let down . . . again. Fear of knowing that you disappeared on purpose and never thought of me and wanted me nowhere in your life. Fears grounded in a reality that is very clear. 

I'll never call you Daddy. I always figured if I met you, I would call you by your first name. Formal. Unfamiliar. We are strangers after all. But a part of who I am is from you. That won't ever change. 

I've recently began wondering about you again. Wondering about your life. But I am no longer a foolish girl hoping for the impossible. I leave it to Fate now, which I've never much believed in. 

But maybe one day, you'll meet me and see what you missed out on. And I'll see where the unfitting pieces of my life finally lie. Because the truth of the matter is this: you can walk away but you always leave something behind, pieces of you.

And those pieces of you reside in me. 

And it's really not fair that I was left alone to figure out where they all go since I never got to see where they came from. 

I'll never call you daddy. I've grown too old to even understand what that means.

But you also must know this: You are one. Rather you want to be or not.