Father’s Day always sneaks up on me.
Not because I forget. I could never forget.
But because every year it seems to find a new place to hurt.
Today I found myself thinking about how old you were when you died.
Fifty.
When I was younger, fifty sounded old. Ancient, even. Now I’m forty-two, and the thought terrifies me. Fifty is only eight years away.
Eight years.
That’s all.
I look at my life now and realise how much living can fit into eight years. How many memories. How many mistakes. How many second chances.
And suddenly fifty doesn’t feel old at all.
It feels stolen.
When you died, I wasn’t ready.
I know people are never truly ready to lose a parent, but I was especially unprepared.
I was lost.
I was fighting demons I had no business fighting. The kind that convince you you’re alone in a crowded room. The kind that whisper lies until you can no longer tell the difference between fear and reality.
I was scared.
I was drowning in things I didn’t understand.
And if I’m honest, I wasn’t really living. I was surviving.
One day at a time.
One hour at a time.
Sometimes one minute at a time.
I often wonder what you would think if you could see me now.
Not because I’ve become extraordinary.
Not because I’ve got everything figured out.
God knows I don’t.
But because I survived.
I made it through.
I wish you could see Goblin.
I wish you could see the way she rolls her eyes at me when she’s trying not to laugh.
I wish you could see the way she feels everything so deeply.
I wish you could have met the little girl who carries pieces of all of us inside her.
I wish you could see the house move.
The boxes.
The chaos.
The plans.
The future I’m trying to build.
I wish you could see that somewhere along the way, despite all the fear and grief and mistakes, I became stronger than I ever thought I could be.
Not fearless.
Just stronger.
Life hasn’t been kind all the time.
There have been years I’d rather not revisit.
Years where getting out of bed felt like an achievement.
Years where grief wasn’t even the loudest thing in my head.
But I’m still here.
And sometimes I wish I could sit down with you for an hour and show you everything.
Tell you all the stories.
Tell you about the people I’ve loved.
The people I’ve lost.
The things I’ve built.
The things I’ve broken.
The person I’ve become.
Maybe that’s the cruelest thing about grief.
Not that someone dies.
But that they stop collecting your story.
Your life keeps unfolding and they never get to turn the next page.
You never get to hear what they would have thought about any of it.
You never get to know if they’d be proud.
I hope you would be.
Not because I’ve done everything right.
But because I kept going.
Because when things got dark, I stayed.
Because when I was scared, I carried on anyway.
Because despite everything, I made it here.
I just wish you could see me now.