To My Beautfiul Daughter #1

To my beautiful daughter,

I confess that I was lost and helpless, not knowing what I’d have to do to stop you from crying.  I remember my only knowledge of you at the time was that you smelt nice.  And you still do, by the way.  Everyone else around me appeared to be a better parent to you than I was.  Letting fatherhood kick in naturally felt anything but.  So I took guidance where it was given, and I enjoyed being schooled in a role that I thought I was being naturally bad at.  I thought there was progress.  You stopped crawling away from me and began welcoming me into your space.  You started to laugh with me.  I was happy.

Then IT happened.  

The threads of life began unraveling.  The spiraling.  The cold and piercing darkness.   I felt fear of how painful it would be when I hit ground fast and hard.   And fast and hard it was.  There were more questions than there were answers.  The blame game started and the man in the mirror loathed me for losing control.  What had happened?  Why now?  When and how?  I was frantic.  Desperate.  Hopeless.  I lost my emotional compass, my confidence, in what I had wanted to do and become. 

Never before.  I thought I had life reasonably well charted out.  I had side stepped and dodged many the slings of outrageous fortune, ripped out arrowheads like a barbarian on a war field.  In my mind, I was indomitable.  Impenetrable.   And then in a flash, my heart was somehow beating outside my chest, exposed to the harshest of elements.  I had to continue projecting that I was still the same man in the day, the same force at work, the same father who would catch you as you fell off my shoulder while you attempted to climb me like the tallest castle wall.  I have been tethering on insanity, babygirl.

All this, while I would have you perched over my head, so that you would not see that the other half of my smile was draped with a tear.

The choices before me are simple.  Continue to feel lost and helpless, or ride the crescendo that is life with wild vigour.  Today I choose to step out of the darkness, because I am no good blind – to those that I love and care, and to you my sweet child.

Loving you has been a welcome intense and profound experience.   

One fear nevertheless remains, and constant it has been – that of hurting you because of the choices made by those you put your trust in.  This is perhaps the most painful experience ever, and I know it may get worse and be too much to bear.  As your father, I vow to protect you from the world.  But I realize that I may instead have to protect you from me, as I may potentially be the one who would end up hurting you the most.  My heart breaks when I flash forward, imagining you speak of me with disdain, ashamed of my failures and my choices when you are an adult.  

Despite what I think is light, it is really still dark, and just too dark for me to properly see.  The future remains blurred.  I forge ahead nevertheless with you as my beacon in hope that I can grow into the hero that you so deserve.

Daddy.