A Letter to Remember

Dear dad,

Here's to wishing you are here - but you are not.
A few words from me to you, to let me know that you are not gone.
For your soul is forever inside me.



Dad,

First of all, thank you.
Thank you for being the dad that everyone wished they could have.
Thank you for being patient with me.
I've lost count of how many times I was mad at you, throwing tantrums and refusing to apologize.
But I can remember the very few times you are mad at me, because the rest of the times - you were simply very patient and forgiving.

Yesterday, as I drove, I suddenly remembered the first car accident I gotten into.
You did not scold me at all, you took my place instead and took care of everything.
And of course, even after I drove well, you managed to take care of everything.
Every time you used my car, you would fill the gas tank.

You were my role model.
Integrity and honesty was the most important thing I learnt from you.
I still remembered when I was a chubby kid - trying to steal a candy.
You saw me and scolded me, and that was my first memory of you being mad at me.

"You are not the center of the world. If you are, that means you are in your own world only"
That was the second time,
I was an angsty teenager, having to deal with hormone changes and everything for the first time.
The world can seem very dark but then very colorful the next second.
I can suddenly burst into tears in a split second, and blamed everything.
However, he told me to snap out of it - that the world is not about ourselves.
We are just a small part of it, and being sad is natural but one should not drown in it.

The rest of it? Honestly I think most of it is you scolding me for not taking care of my health, being egoistic, or it was me who started the fight.

So, thank you and sorry dad.
I must have put you in such as hard time.
You were a good dad, no doubt you are the best when it comes to family.
You were perfect to me.

Yet now I am questioning about you, in the professional world.
Could it be you were imperfect?
Why do you keep everything to yourself,
Why do you have to be so nice to everyone?
Yet at the same time being so manipulative.

Maybe, that side of yours is one side that I will never understand,
a side that I never got to meet.

I would like to apologize once again,
I can't be the person I promised,
the person who will fight for everything until I die for this world.
A world that drives me crazy.
I can't be myself in this world, everyone is my friend and enemy at the same time.
A lonely world that made me build my walls once again.

So instead, I gave up.
Because I do not want to lose myself.
I am losing myself slowly, but fast enough to change me into a different person.
A person who just wants to stay still. Not wanting to move.
But this time you are not here to scold me, Dad.
So please let me go and be myself, in my own way.