Daddy.

i remember when i was about four or five, and we lived in ardencaple, and i had a night light that had a beauty & the beast shade on it that made scary shapes on the wall, you used to read to me every night. a chapter from one of my winnie the pooh books. they were gorgeous books, i still have them on my bookshelves in my bedroom. i could never throw them away because i used to love that time so much.
i also remember when you taught me to ride my first bike without stabelisers, on the grit pitch at the rugby club, and i know how mnay times i fell off and cried. but i also remember how happy you were when i finally got going.
i remember sitting in yours & my mum's room, which was the last room on the left before the front door, on the end of the bed, with you teaching me how to tie the laces on my trainers. that probably took as long as learning to ride the bike haha, but you were patient, and now my laces are always perfect :)
i remember your birthday party at the rugby club where it was james bond & bond girls etc. me and my mummy practically had the same dresses except mine was a little girls dress obviously. you told us both how beautiful we looked, and i have the picture of us together from that night pinned up in my room somewhere, along with another few of me and you together.
apparently i wouldn't go near anyone in the club unless i was with you, when i was yonger, but i don't remember that far back. i loved you. i love you.
i remember that night a few months ago when i came home really pished and you told me off, as was deserved, for being drunk AGAIN. and i remember saying the one thing i was most ashamed of saying in my entire life. "you're not even my real dad. you don't love me." oh god, i know what it must have done to you to hear that, and i hope you know how much it killed me when i woke up and remembered. i have never, ever been so disgusted in myself. because you are my dad. as much as my "real" dad is my father as well, that doesn't make you any less of that. because you've been here for me for longer than i can remember, you've put up with my shit for the past 15 years or whatever, and you never once brought it up. you've done everything for me, for all of us, especially for my mum.
i've been so shit to you over the past few years because as i got older we grew more and more apart, argued more and more. yet you still stuck by me through every little thing life threw at me.
so why this?
i think i started this to try and put into words how much i'm going to miss you, but i have since realised that that would be impossible. i'm going to miss the stupidest little things. the way you walk about silently, in your wee grumpy way. your really shit jokes. our banter. giving you a hug when i'm really upset and finding comfort in the fact that i'm still so much smaller than you, even now. you waking me up in the morning and having it timed so well that that i'm always out of bed at exactly the same time. the faces we make when my mum speaks and we both think the same thing at the same time. the way you lick the spoon when you finish serving something and it drives her INSANE, but i still notice you doing it every time. laughing to myself when i see you making yourself food after dinner and thinking how you will eat ANYTHING on toast.
i love you so much i'm not even going to try and explain it. i take comfort in the fact that you're here. after all these years of arguments i've never doubted the fact that you love me, love us, anyway.
but i was wrong.
and i think this was all to say, simply, please don't leave me. please, please don't go.