I get a phone call in first hour from a number in Tennessee number, its him; my dad. I let my phone ring
“Why would he call now, why right now?!” I’m screaming in my head.
My phone vibrates showing me a voicemail he left me. I want to hear what he has to say so bad my body starts to ache. I’m so curious to what he has to say when in my head I’m already planning out how the conversation will go. I ask to leave class and find myself standing in the hallway feeling more alone than ever.
“Hey baby its your dad give me a call back.”
Nothing, he calls me and leaves that voicemail with nothing to say while I have a stream of a million words flowing through my head.
My dad left 10 years ago and as a little girl I didn’t understand why nor did I understand that he wasn’t going to come back. When I was 7 I left to go to his house, when my mom pulls in the driveway I can hear her whispering to herself. No one was there, not my dad, not his girlfriend, not even their dog. Furniture was thrown outside, his frontyard looked like a junkyard. Sense that day I went 8 years without seeing my dad. Periodically he would call sometimes my mom would let me talk to him, other times I would find out he called earlier that week and she hid it from me. He walked in and out of my life as he pleased with those calls. I am helpless. I never want to talk to him again, but everytime he calls and every voicemail I listen to I can’t help but to feel the need to talk to him. He wasn’t here for my first kiss, or my first breakup, he wasn't here for my 13th birthday he hasn’t been here for anything, but still to this day every important thing that goes on in my life I feel as if I need to tell him.
I stood in the hallway and listened to the voicemail 3 times before I decided to call back.
“Hey baby its your dad how are you?”
I explode. Everything I was thinking earlier spills out of my mouth, as this is happening though I feel a sense of relief.
“You cannot walk in and out of my life as you please, you can’t call me everyday for a month then not call for 3 after that. You walked out and I’m still the one worrying about you 10 years later. You’re supposed to be my dad and be there for me but you couldn’t do that so I either need you here for good or not here at all.”
The phone call goes silent. I felt closure.

“Well if thats how you feel nothing I can do to change it.”
It was that easier, he walked out just as fast as I could push him out. From that moment on I’d be a different person. I always wondered how a dad could pick drugs and alcohol over their child who they “love”. For the longest time I blamed myself over and over again, really I knew it wasn’t my fault but I thought I needed a reason. Now I don’t, I’ve grown up without him my mom has always taken care of me exactly how I need. But that phone call that day changed me. I didn’t need to worry anymore, the pain that he had caused me without him even knowing or trying ate me alive for years, but now I could change that. There wasn’t something wrong with me! He made me who I am, the way I think, the things I do and won’t do, the way I feel about things are because of him. What he did formed me into who I am, but now I can go on with life without him and do the things and think the ways that I do because of what I’ve learned. I walked out of my classroom one person, and walked back in feeling brand new.