Day 122: Dear Dead Stepfather

Dear Dead Stepfather,

I have been looking forward to this day since I was eight years old. I can still smell the scent of the grape Bubbleyum and the warm, smooth surface of the quarter you gave me the first day Mom introduced you to us. Bribery of children is an age-old custom, but even at eight I knew that you were not a nice man and a quarter was not enough. That was the only time you tried to ingratiate yourself with me and my brother. After that, you did not care if we liked you or if we were happy. In fact, you made sure that my childhood was not a happy one. You stole so many years from me and your presence in our lives was a perpetual source of negativity and tension. You are the only person I have ever managed to truly hate. Now that you are dead I wonder what will become of all that malice.

Dearest Dead Stepfather, hating someone takes tremendous energy. Is it possible that hating you and wishing you dead all these years has taken away a part of myself I could have been channeling toward something more positive? So what now? With your departure from the earth, will the energy I put into hating you transition to a sudden upswing in motivation? Perhaps I will finally have the discipline to write my book, or the focus to successfully hunt down my perfect career. Maybe once I let go of all the pain and anger your presence in my life built up over the years I will be free to find and to live out the happiness I missed. They say the best revenge is living well, I think maybe I’m about to find out.

Dearest Dead Stepfather, I still have nightmares about you. I’ve never told anyone that. The damage you did to my family lives on in my dreams, but now that you are dead maybe I can finally rest. I am sorry that I am the kind of person that has hated and wished another dead, but sometimes the seeds of our destructive behavior toward another take root. I am the seedling you planted, so in a way you nurtured and fostered my hate and now I’m free.

Dearest Dead Stepfather, thank you for finally doing one unselfish thing in your miserable life. Thank you for leaving this world and all the people whose lives you touched with your spite, bitterness and pettiness. Thank you for giving us this gift. This is one of the happiest days of my life, and I owe it all to you.