I use to scream the most hateful things to my step dad. He raised me since I was a baby. “I hate you..!” “I wish you weren’t my dad..!” and “I wish you were the one in prison instead of him..!” were the ones he heard the most and the ones I regret saying more then anything. When I was about 5 or so, me and him use to get along great. I was his little girl. He told me we use to just sit on the couch laughing for hours on end about the littlest of things. I don’t know what changed that I wish I knew… But I grew older and it seemed like we had been fighting forever and it was a constant thing.

            He use to tell me what I said didn’t hurt him but I know it did. My mom use to tell me how that made him feel. Looking back I can’t believe I actually said those things. Of course we argued sometimes, maybe more then we should’ve... But in the end he was always there for me. He was strict and he cared for me and I took that as him being mean and unfair. He use to stay up half the night helping me with my homework until I understood. In the end we would laugh at how slow I was.

            I remember one time we were arguing about degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit. I swore to him that they meant different things, like hot or cold. While he kept trying to tell me it’s just another way to tell the temperature. We still laugh about that till this day.

            He took my side whenever I got in trouble and he never gave up on me. I wasn’t the best behaved child but I know he saw through my bad attitude. Yet, I still continued to push him away. One time I even told him I wish him and my mother would split up… Who knew one day my words would come true.

            He traveled a lot for his job and when he was away for a long amount of time I got away with a lot of stuff that he wouldn’t of let slide. I guess it was just me being my spoiled ungrateful self that wished he could come home less… but when it happened; when I started to see less of him I honestly hated it. My family seemed to fall apart when him and my mom divorced. I blamed myself most of the time.

            In the next two years he was gone, I only got to see him maybe 3 times. He wasn’t really a part of my life anymore. He probably doesn’t know it or believe me but I looked forward to seeing him all the time. I never called him though and that led him to think I was still pushing him away, but I wasn’t. And when I went to visit him for a week, it changed my life.

            I ended up living with him and moving to South Carolina with him. We got closer and we seemed to understand each other more. We came to realize we’re both stubborn which caused a lot of the arguments when I was younger. We talked about how we use to be and I KNEW I didn’t want to lose him again.

            Now he helps me with my school work and with a lot of my feelings that I tend to keep locked up inside until I just let them all out at once. He’s been helping me grow up and become a young adult and without him I probably wouldn’t be who I am and see the things the way I do. I don’t know where me and him would stand right now if I never got the chance to realize how much I needed him when he was gone. Now in another 10 years ill be able to look back and say “When I was younger me and my dad had our ups and downs but he always had my bad. Just like he is now. Honestly I couldn’t of asked for a better father.”

-Ashley Tripp