Day after

 Dearest Cara,

I am writing this the morning after you sent that very strongly worded and honestly it felt like hate text message. I wish you had called. I wish a lot of things but life is a long hard road you are just getting started on. Right now I am sad, hurt, in pain even mad that I can not do anything to fix it but I respect your feelings as an adult. And I will step away knowing a piece of me is gone hopefully not forever. 

It would be easy to dismiss some of what you said as things conflated and incorrect. These are things that happened when you were angry or I was angry. But I respect that this is how you saw what happened in these instances. 

I am sorry that is how you remember things. I really am. I do not know what you wanted me to say to the things you said.  I tried very hard to be a good father and I loved every minute of the time I had with you. 

What I think you do miss is that in the limited time I was ever able to see you due to differing circumstances and distance all I ever tried was my best. I love you with all my heart and always will. Which is why right now I feel like a piece of me has been ripped out.

I feel like I could explain each of the items in your text and tell you how some actually happened and why they happened but I feel you have decided that I am the evil thing here. And anything I say will be misconstrued.

One item I will call out. You are right when I posted about you not wanting to come down here. I should not have. But you hurt me and you hurt Erin even more. She spent months thinking she was the reason you didn't want to come down. We only got to see you once a year. And I had to fight for the amount of time in those visits almost every year it felt like. And when you didn't want to come it hurt and I lashed out and reacted. It was not a very adult thing to do. I am sorry for that. And in fact I took that post down relatively quickly after I had cooled off and thought about it some. But I don’t know if you ever thought about how much you were hurting us when you made that choice.

All I ever wanted from your visits was you to have memories and know that we all cared about you. Maybe this is payback , karma , for the fact that I didn't want anything to do with my mother who left me at 6 months old and was not around. Or for the fact that Jim Manard , I just couldn’t ever connect with, because he was really never around either. 

You know it is funny. The reason I was in your life was because I did not want to be my parents. I did the best I could and I loved you with everything I had. Your mother when you were born did not want me in your life. I was going to abide by her wishes but decided otherwise. I could not just let you not know I existed. And those first times I saw you. That little bald head, that squinched up face you would make.  I knew I made the right choice.  From your text I am guessing you think I did not. 

I have battled over the years what to tell you about the past. But I've always tried to focus on the here and now. Give you memories,  hopefully good ones. From the hundreds of pictures of you smiling over the years I think I succeeded some. I guess the bad just outweighed the good in your mind.