To the father who never knew me:

I'm sorry it took you so long to finally talk to me — that you felt the urge to talk to me after being gone for 16 years. You thought you being absent was my fault, although I was a child.

You missed important milestones like my first day of kindergarten and my high school graduation. You missed my 18th birthday, my entire varsity soccer season and my first heartbreak.

You said you wanted to try to connect and learn about me, but all you did was blame me for everything that happened when I was little. You talked with my brother and talked bad about my mom, the only parent who was actually there for all those important events.

Too bad you never got to know the real me. I'm not just this little girl anymore. I'm a sophomore in college with hopes of being a child psychologist.

Although I still love Disney like I did when I was little, you don't know what my hopes and dreams are, or what my likes and dislikes are. You don't know what I did all throughout high school. You don't know what I do in my free time. You don't know any of the stuff that makes up who I am.

You always said that you wanted to reconnect and learn about me and be a family, but there's no effort. There's blame. There's trash talking about Mom. There's hurt and pain that'll never be resolved.

You've been gone for too long. Hopefully, someday, you'll see the mistakes that you have made and might want to try again the right way. Try to learn about your daughter.

Until that day...

-Your beautiful, strong, competent, independent daughter