15 - All the best cowboys have daddy issues.

Dear Dad,

You don't know me very well but if there's one thing you should know, it's that I have a tendency to deny that I'm a young talented writer, one with the natural gift for finding the right words to say at the right time but this... this is undoubtedly one of the hardest things I've ever had to write.

If you're reading this, it probably means that I worked up the courage to link you to this blog or send this to you in the form of a written letter. It could also mean that you've used your 'brilliant' skills of private investigation to dig up this particular aspect of your big boy's life, which, in turn, would mean you've become slightly more obsessive since I last spoke to you five months ago. Either way, you're reading this, so good for me, and good for you, for I hold a strong belief in the sanctity of honesty between family members. Everybody deserves truth.

I get the feeling that you've been served truth throughout the seventeen years that I've known you. You don't handle it very well. I look at your alcoholism, your addiction to the cigarettes, your money problems and your concupiscent engagement with prostitutes in God Knows Where and I have listened to you explain to me time and time again why you're not an asshole. I don't mind any of those bad habits. I don't mind at all. I don't even mind your two divorces and I don't mind your negligence toward your three other children.

But the thing I just can't help but take issue with is how you treat me and how you see me. You know, you have tried to teach me how to be a man and often I feel like I have failed you. I feel useless in your eyes because you seem to think that I don't know what life is about, that I am naive and I don't know how to life a successful happy life. I have to ask, who are you to judge me? What have you ever truly wanted and desired in your life besides a good fuck? I know you remember the night where you cried to me about your failures in life and you asking me not to be another failure in the Rivera family. Don't you know your son tries so hard to be better? Don't you know he tries so hard to grow up beyond his years?

I have very few friends because of you. I'm always serious and I never know how to take things lightly. I'm not a child. That's all because of you but I'm fine with it. You don't seem to be fine with yourself after your forty-five years of experience and you don't have the right, not even the parental right, to judge me and think that I'm not living my life in the 'right' or 'wrong' way.

There's no easy way to say this so I'll just say it. I hate you and I don't have the slightest iota of love in my heart that belongs to you. I was an accident. I was a mistake. Even though you and Mom both regarded me as some sort of a perfect storm, she was the one that has always treated me like I was. Perhaps it comes with her job of being a teacher but either way, I know you would agree that she's been a great mother to me, one full of devotion and care and one that always carried the ability to accept me, be my friend and teach me how to find love in this world but what have you ever given me - besides the booze, the money and the time of day where nobody else wanted to be with you?

You know you had me and my mother back in the day. You know you had your second wife and your three children before you got divorced the second time. This isn't about when she cheated on you. I'm talking about your cheating on her and your lack of effort to keep a marriage together when you first got married. It wasn't the children that screwed you over. It wasn't your wives that screwed you over either. Blaming your failures on anything other than yourself is such a sore loser thing to do. It was you.

You are the part of me that makes me think I am unfit to be a father. You are the one that's passed on your anger and arrogance to me. I used to think that I was stubborn just like you but the truth is that I am capable of change and have done so. You are the one that's always been stubborn. You are the one that nobody wants to forgive because it's futile. I'm very happy with who I am. You are the one that will always be the way you are and I don't know if you're happy with it but because of who you are, that's it.

I'm leaving you behind.

Michael.