I don't recognize our daughter's voice anymore...

I don’t recognize my daughter’s voice anymore. It’s not because I don’t hear her voice as often, I don’t. The last time we talked was Christmas and before that it, November 15, 2012.

But it’s not the sound of her voice that I am not familiar with. I love the sound of her voice still, perhaps now more than ever because I hear it so seldom. I hang on every word even though her words are harsh, cold, and too often cut deep. I listen for remnants of the daughter I once knew; a daughter that is ensnared inside a web of hate and dysfunction.

I don’t recognize my daughter’s voice anymore.

I don’t recognize April in her text messages that no longer end with “I love you” or “I miss you.” All the gentleness that they once held is gone. Instead they are accusatory and end as sudden and as abruptly as they appear on my cell phone. I keep my phone near not knowing when I will hear from her again. I am not allowed to contact her.

I used to fool myself into believing that her older sister Kaylee, drowning in her own dysfunction, had taken April’s cell phone and that she was the one texting me. I pictured April jumping up, trying desperately to get her phone back from her sister twice her size. The 20 year old beauty school dropout holding her little sister back with one hand and while holding the cell phone high out of reach she would text me in the rude and disrespectful manner that is the norm for Kaylee. 

The way our daughter communicates with me now is beyond distant and surpasses cold into icy.  She has an unappeasable loathing for me. There is nothing that I can say, no answer that will satisfy her.  Anything that comes out of my mouth, to her is a lie or somehow perceived as being an attempt of manipulation, or an attack on her or her mother. If I ask her what I can do to make things better she responds that there is nothing I can do and that she doesn’t want things to get better. If I point out that I have always been a loving father to her, she automatically goes on the defensive stating that her mother is the wonderful parent and has always been there for her, or that she is trying to parent.

If I respond with “I love you beautiful,” or “We miss you,” I get nothing. She simply ignores it and moves on to further attack me on a different subject.

And If I call, my calls get ignored or her mother takes a message and tells me that she will have April call me later. If I sit back and wait for her calls and miss a day or two, then her mother texts asking why I don’t call our daughter and then I get the same text from April. “You don’t even call or text.”  Both of them insinuating that I don’t care about April.

I don’t recognize my daughter anymore. If you think this is a sad thing to say, well, it is a heartbreaking thing to experience.

Her reasoning, in regards to her justification for not seeing me, her step-mother, or her sisters has become nonsensical and her rational is nonexistent.