I will start off this letter with the most important words in the world – I love you. Probably more than you can imagine, more than I thought I possibly could. More than you’ll ever know. This letter is only to tell you about my undying love for you. The love that you probably have not the slightest idea of its magnitude. You were not around as often as both you and I would have liked in order for you to understand and trust in this kind of love but I love you.
This unconditional love is unmoved & has never been altered by any circumstance. It is a love that was born within me when my tiny heart was formed. A love that you own. It knows only your name and your face. I cannot begin to explain what happens within me when this love lays its eyes on you.
You were my first love. I met you and knew who you were just by the touch of your hands. I was blinded to the world but my goodness, your touch spoke to me. No one had to tell me or ever remind me of what you were to me. There is this special, unmistakable Godly connection between us and till this day, it hovers in and around me like it was born just yesterday.
I see you barely more than a couple of times in a year, yet that love that one would expect to melt away with the years, the mistakes, the tears, the broken promises & the absence, emerges from a quiet place and buzzes through my body at your sight. It suprises me every single time.
Our mistakes, our knowledge, our circumstances and paths led us to where we are right now. I don’t resent the paths, the inevitable and God’s plan. Look at where we are individually. I am growing into something special. Your eyes smile when you realise how far I’ve come. That glow I see and feel when you look at me, that is what sustains me. That is what waters the love that I was born with. The love that was specifically created only to be recognised and felt by you.
Although your glow sustains me, it is at a constant battle with this fragile, painful longing. I can barely explain what it is that I yearn for but this much I know – the heart wants what it wants. I’d be lying if I tried to explain, word for word, what it is that my heart is longing for but if it ever comes by, the soul will know.
I do however wish, with everything inside of me, that you lived up to be what my soul knows you should have been – a father. That father figure that I would watch in the cartoons as I was growing up. You know, the one who would always make everything ok. The one who everyone would cry to and was fueled by the sadness to be a better man. The father I wanted you to be. The father I waited for you to be. The one I wanted to see every morning when I woke up and the last person I would smile to before I closed my eyes to sleep. I wish you were there EVERY SINGLE DAY. I wanted to run to you when you would come back from work. Sit on your lap whenever I felt like it. And know what it was like to wake up to a kept promise.
I wish I could sweep out the pieces of every single broken promise. I wish my heart never knew of such a burden. I wish that I didn’t remember you as the first man who ever lied to me. I wish you showed up. I wish I never waited. I wish I never believed in every promise that you made. I wish I didn’t love you so much. I wish this longing would go away and I wish I didn’t believe that it was too late.
Only God’s timing will prove me wrong. The damage of too many broken promises is irreversible and has no matching pain. But as I sit here, I’m writing this knowing that once you show up again…the spark will be re-ignited, the love will emerge, these words will mean nothing and all that will matter is your comforting presence.
I do not doubt for a second that only God could be responsible for something this unbreakable.
I love you forever
Your Daughter
Writer: Boity Thulo