100TWC - Day 58: Heartfelt Apology

This is a hard one. Hard to write, almost certainly hard to read. Hard to even think about. Because there's an apology - a heartfelt apology - that I have needed to make for a long time, and I can never make it.

Do you think about it much? I bet you do. In those quiet moments, perhaps, before you go to sleep. Or if you're feeling down for any reason. Or sometimes does it hit you at the most surprising times, when everything is sunshine and warmth and happiness. And then you remember with a sudden jolt and a lump in the throat. I do.

But for me -- and I know this isn't about me, but this is how I still feel about it; the only way I can express it -- for me the worst times are whenever I see or hear stories of abandonment. Of children left behind. They always make me cry. I'm crying now, thinking about it. Writing about it. There are some scenes, in some movies, that I simply cannot watch.

Even now, with the perspective of all these years, it's still there. Like a stain on my soul. One that I can never scrub off no matter what I do to repair that old wound. It bears a scar, you see. I knew it would. I talked it over and over with people who had been through it. Talking about it like that was, partly, just a way of postponing the inevitable, but it was also a way of validating the hard decision. I needed to be certain that, of all the bad choices I could make, the one I ended up with was the least bad for the most number of people. Which is why it took me so long to go. Even though I knew for a long time I had to, I couldn't bring myself to do it for years. Because I would always, always rather hurt myself than hurt you.

In the end though, I knew there was nothing else for it. I had to do it. Because staying, in the long term, would have caused more hurt than going. I tried to explain, even though I knew I never would be able to. Even though I knew the message would be garbled, and infected with lies and half-truths by those more interested in serving their own agenda. You couldn't possibly have understood, back then. And knowing that you understand now, now that you're all grown up and out there, doing your own things and living your own lives and, no doubt, making your own mistakes the way all of us do. Stumbling around in the dark looking for the way forward. Now I know you understand, it helps. A little. But you didn't understand at the time. You were bewildered, frightened, angry, and lost.

And that's the hurt I can never mend, no matter how many times I apologise. I can't go back there and be there for you, help you through it the way I always had up to that point. The way I started to again, much later. So this isn't only an apology to you today, though you surely deserve one. It is also -- or even mainly, perhaps -- an apology to the 11-year-old you, and the 6-year-old you. The frightened, tearful girls I left behind who grew up, in spite of all the pain and loss, to be the most wonderful, talented, beautiful daughters a man could ever dream of. Love you.