Betty Dalton and Elías Santamarina-James have been dating for seven months of pure bliss.
In Betty's eyes, their relationship is nearly flawless, if you don't count his insistence to sleep with her and his constant need for reassurance.
It's the fir...
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A daughter was under no obligation to beg her father for a relationship, nor was she the one who should carry the burden of their failed and broken bond.
It was easier said than done though.
My parents met in their second year of dentistry school. Mom had the charming perfect boyfriend, fast on the track to become a kickass lawyer according to my aunt, but something was amiss-thus she broke up with him for my father.
She got into the rollercoaster that was her marriage with him a couple of years after they graduated. The thing about rollercoasters was that the rush of adrenaline that led you to feeling more alive when you plummeted down and went up once again didn't make up for the headache you got when your head banged into the back of your seat. Once you got down and landed on the ground, the adrenaline wore off but the headache remained.
Just like the exciting and alluring moments with my dad did and she was only left with his unpredictability, his mood swings and his inability to commit to her, to us, to me.
The child that I once was would be proud that I no longer asked myself why I wasn't enough to make him stay and yet I was terrified that everyone would leave.
I never won. I never won when it came to my father and as much as I wanted to believe he was the one who lost the opportunity to have someone as amazing as me as his daughter-I was still the one who always lost.
I dreamed of burying the pain in hatred but the first found a way out every time.
The divorce was nothing short of messy, not that I could actually remember much given that mom would send me to my aunt's house to shield me from everything. My twelfth birthday was the last one he attended. Most of the party passed by in a blur of tears because I knew he wasn't coming back. When I turned thirteen I hiccupped on the phone trying to reach him but he never picked up and by the time I turned fourteen I knew better than to beg him for something he would never give me.
Afterwards, whenever people asked about him I would tell them that he had left us and somehow that made mom get mad at me; she repeated that he had left her, not me but the truth was unavoidable.
If he planned to leave then why did he make me a daddy's girl?
He made himself a God and shaped my life based on his religion and now I was a forsaken hectic. His name a prayer on my lips.
Once upon a time I was Elizabeth Lily Valerini-which was another example as to why mothers' last names remained superior-and months after my thirteen birthday, Betty Dalton was born. It was all thanks to my mom. She always knew I was her daughter first and foremost.
I had an assortment of glitter glue, brush pens, washi tape, crayons, colouring pencils, heart-shaped clips I had made myself, highlighters, markers, old magazines, brushes and a watercolour set, stencils, stickers and I had even bought a label maker; and of course, an arrangement of multiple pictures of the two of us together and photos I had taken of him in different occasions, on his birthday or during swimming practice.
