It started when I was about 9; the insecurity. I was comparing myself to girls I had never thought twice about before. It was such a gross feeling, for years I didn’t understand where the sudden self-doubt came from. What happened to me? What ruined me? Why did I never feel like I was enough? I often asked myself these questions. I had never felt that way before, I always felt like I was more than enough. My mom noticed too, “What happened to my sunshine?” she would ask. I never knew what to tell her.

She put me into therapy, I realized it was my dad who did this to me. Who ruined me. He took away my “sunshine”. We were very close when I was little, I looked at him as if he had hung the moon and stars. I adored him. As the time passed, something happened to him. He changed. I never understood what I was doing was wrong, I thought it was normal for every little girl to come home to piles of beer cans. I thought it was okay for me to do everything in my power to please him, so I could get just a little piece of his affection. I was always treated like garbage. He never appreciated what I did for him. All I ever got in return was a pat on the back, or the occasional “I love you, Mija.”

As I got older, it became less tolerable. A girlfriend came into the picture, with three kids. I was suddenly fighting for his attention every time I went to visit him for the weekend. She was jealous of our relationship, I was his only child. She used to say he favored me over her kids, but he was my dad. Not theirs. So what was the problem? It got to the point where he couldn’t even give me a hug or kiss without her having to say something. It was sick. I never thought I would be in my very own Cinderella story. 

She was awful. Always making malicious comments about my weight, my mental health, and worst of all, my mother. It hurt when she said these things, but what hurt even worse, was that my dad did nothing. He would look the other way. This made my mental state spiral downhill. I don’t think fathers can grasp just how much their presence and wrongdoings affect their daughters. I felt like I was not enough everyday. What was so wrong with me that my own father didn’t think I was worth standing up for? I was severely depressed and started doing homeschool, which made everything worse. She started making comments about that too, “You basically do nothing all day.”

On April 10th, 2021, everything changed. We had come home from spending the day shopping, we all sat in the living room watching TV. My Tia had made pico de gallo, just for me. My step brother asked to take it and eat it for lunch with his friends the next day, who had made racist comments about my family in the past. I said “No, my aunt made that for me” I didn’t mean he couldn’t have any. I just didn’t want him taking it to his awful friends. Of course his mom pipes up and says “Well if your aunt is going to make it just for you, make sure she takes it to your house and not here.” My dad pitches in next, my own dad! “It’s for everybody” he snaps at me. I lost it and ran upstairs to the bedroom I shared with my step sister. I was humiliated. I felt like everything was closing in on me. This kind of situation had happened many times before, but this time it was different. This time my dad joined in.

I called my mom and told her I wanted to leave, but then decided it would be better to get some sleep and leave in the morning. After about an hour of venting to my step sister, we started to hear yelling. This wasn’t anything new to the both of us, they always fought with each other, but this time was scarier. It felt serious. They were louder. They came upstairs and the rest of it was a blur, I was suddenly outside having to call the police because she was hitting my dad. I remember her calling me and my family trash and making fun of me for crying. My dad just stood there, didn’t say anything, didn’t try to defend me. I was done with everything, I called my mom and the cops came. His girlfriend lied and made it all seem like it was a misunderstanding. I was sick to my stomach. How could she manage to get away with this? I went to my dad and found him crying, I remember him telling me he lost everything. “Everything”. His “everything” had been emotionally abusive to me for years. At that moment I decided I wasn’t coming back to see him every weekend, he didn’t deserve to see me. My mom came and took me home. It was over.

At least I thought it was, in the weeks following my dad showed me how far down I was on his list of priorities. He got back together with this woman, even after she disrespected his own child, and told her kids that he had chosen them over me. I still saw him, sometimes. He would take me out to eat or go to the movies, but he was never really there. He always was in a hurry to get home to his family. The effect this situation had on me was terrible. I never wanted to get out of bed, everyday I felt even worse. My mood swings became terrible, and I took it out on my mom. I had stopped going to therapy months before this, so I had no professional help. I turned to self harm to try and take the pain away but nothing changed.

My mother decided the best decision for us was to move 2 hours away to a little town called Willits. She had gotten a good paying job and wanted to start fresh. I resented her for this at first. I wanted nothing to do with anything there. I didn’t want anything to change, all I wanted to do was stay in my hometown and collect the scraps that were me and my dad’s relationship. She knew this, and knew it wasn’t healthy for me, so she put me back in therapy. It took me a year in therapy to fully transition to what my life is now. 

Restarting therapy was the best decision my mom could have ever made for me. I learned to accept that I would never be able to change my father. I never had a stable father and never will. How he acted had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with him. My self worth came back and I truly started to believe everything I learned from my therapist. You cannot change anyone, and you never will. Let my experience show you this. I spent years trying to change him, and it never worked. He showed me he wouldn’t change. It is not worth your time and well being. You are more than enough.