Why do I fall apart when he stays away for days and days? More importantly, why does he stay away from me, why does he leave me…alone…wondering…writing…

“I sit alone here in my dark, silent room, writing to you by candlelight and staring out the window at the falling snow; each little snowflake living its brief moment in the light of the street lamp, lingering or hastened through this limelight at the whim of the wind, passing thus away, back into the dark space of night, becoming again invisible, forgotten.

Here I wait for you. I’ve waited for you all day. You said you would come. You did not come. I ask myself in my solitude ‘Did he forget me?’ I ask myself ‘Why does everyone forget me?’ like a small girl left waiting alone outside in the cold after her school has closed for the day and all her classmates have long since been picked up and taken back home to the warm embrace of a family. The small girl stands alone, shivering in the cold, unclaimed, abandoned, orphaned…scared. Nobody wants her, nobody remembers her – not even her own parents.

As I stare into the night, white with falling snow, deep inside me I feel this pain – my brief time in the light of your love is done.

I ask myself, ‘How many days will he desert me for this time? How many weeks?’

I ask myself, ‘Why did they forget me? Why did they leave me alone, waiting?’ Time after time, I only find one explanation – I am not worthy.”

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My very best friend calls me “big-little girl.” This is because no matter how many years I live, no matter what experiences I go through, deep inside where I don’t let everyone see, I am still the girl I was when I was 6 or 8 … and I relive the same fears and tears that I did when I was so young.

On Friday morning I woke up from a dream, which led my mind back to a time when I was 10 years old and my father had taken his girlfriend, my brother and me on a trip to Maine. We were all staying in a nice little cottage there by the sea. The cottage had just two bedrooms and a bed in the pull-out couch in the living room area. The first night, I had chosen one of the bedrooms to sleep in. My brother slept in the other bedroom, while my dad and his girlfriend slept in the bed in the living room.

I remember I felt scared being alone in the bedroom, so the next day I asked my dad if I could sleep out in the living room. I felt scared and alone and that is the only reason I asked to change rooms. So, the next night my dad let me sleep in the living room; he and his girlfriend slept in the bedroom. I hadn’t understood they would leave the living room. That night, as I lay in the bed in the living room, I cried; I cried like a small child standing alone in a crowd after losing its parents. I wanted to go back into the bedroom again and my dad got angry at me. I didn’t want to be alone. All I knew was that I was scared and left on my own…and that is why I was crying – I didn’t have the solution.

After I had been crying for some time, my brother spoke from his bedroom to my dad “Dad, Lucia’s crying…” and I heard my father shout angrily in response “I really don’t give a shit!!” and I cried even more.

As I lay in bed recalling this moment on Friday, I felt that too-familiar scared loneliness again and I began crying – a 10-year old girl all my life, to this moment, and all the world, my father.

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