I'm grossly and violently sobbing. This song has hit me so strongly...
My dad skipped out on me when I was 6. He left for Florida to follow his mother without a look back. It was his mother, my grandma, that always brought me down to visit them every summer. He was barely around. He's still barely around. It wasn't until I was older and getting on with my own life that he started making any real effort (and still, the last I talked to him was over 8 months ago).
I hated men for the longest time, and I honest-to-god believed men were incapable of love (based on him, and my mother's choices in men after him). My perception of the male gender was so skewed and tainted. I didn't really view them as people, but something else entirely. Like they were all assholes, liars, commitment-phobic beings who would abandon their responsibilities at the first sign of it getting serious and heavy.
It wasn't until 5 years ago that I met the love of my life that I really saw the difference in what a real man is from those like my father. He made me see that there's more to men as a whole than the prejudices I'd laid on them because of my abandonment. He taught me that men are just as capable of love as any woman. He made me see what a father should do by being the best father in the world to our two beautiful children. To say I'm blessed is the understatement of the century.
Thank you, Nick.
