Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Your dad was a dickhead, my darling. Please don’t think it had anything to do with you. I know you were only six when he left so you can’t have understood that. And I know you loved him beyond words, and that his abandonment has gutted you like a fish, over and over.
My heart withers to think of your little body, your little brain, your wet eyes and a claggy rivulet of snot running to your top lip. The way you were when he left, so small and scared. I want to turn back time and hold you in my arms and whisper into your hair.
Your tall, gentle mother had a red Holden station wagon that broke down a lot, she used to have to keep a large bottle of water in the foot well on the passengers side because the coolant was always leaking. One day, your father threw rocks at her, collected from the dirt road out the front of your house and you crouched behind that red Holden with your brother, listening to your parents scream at each other and hearing the rocks thud against the steel.
When I was six I had my first sleep over at your house. All I can remember is lying awake on a blow up mattress and listening to your brother snore. I remember walking down the stairs, whimpering, and finding your mother and father reading in the orange lamp light in the lounge room. Your dad drove me home, I missed my parents and I couldn’t sleep. I remember him being angry with me, but maybe I made that part up. Who could be angry with someone else’s six year old kid in flannel PJs that her Nanna made for her? Probably your dad.
Growing up I was often jealous of you. You were so pretty, so good at sport, so noble and quiet and everyone seemed to fall in love with you. My usually distracted, unimpressed father adored you. He had my sister and I, but you were something different and special, he rescued you. I remember for your 13thbirthday he bought a pink hooded jumper from the surf shop, picked it out and got it wrapped and everything. And I felt sick with envy because he’d never picked anything out for me before.
Our relationship has stretched on, thinning and thickening like a wonkily drawn line from our childhood, through our adolescence and now it has brought us here. Two young women, twenty four years old, completely different people with worlds-apart stories. And I know you are about to break so all I have to say is this:
I love you. I will always love you, for better or for worse and with out logic, I will love you. If you killed someone, I reckon I would still love you.
You are beautiful, from your soul out. You are open and genuine and real and people like being around you. If you wanted you could have all the mentors and running buddies and coffee dates a girl could ask for, you’d never have to be alone on a Saturday night drinking red wine in bed like I am now. You are special.
You are also smart and really fucking beautiful to look at. You have opinions, you question things, you are kind and you are very, very strong.
Remember when you were a little kid and you used to disappear into the night sometimes when you came to stay over? The sky would be that dusky navy, the magpies would be cooing and warbling in the trees and scratch throated cockatoos would be flying through the sky. My dad would thunder along the dirt roads in his ute, my sister and I piled in the back with the dogs on our laps, yelling your name into the cold air. I can picture you, your little tracksuit clad body standing behind a thick gumtree, tormented and thrilled. I can see your foggy breath as you watch the yellow columns from the headlights slice through the tree trunks and I can imagine something blooming in your chest as you hear your name, shouted by a desperate chorus of voices. You were wanted, you were loved.
You still are.