My High School Personal Statement Was About My Father
The Indelible Scars of His Absence
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I write letters to my newborn son, Myles, sharing my journey as a first-time dad and spreading the love I didn't experience myself. If you’ve been here before — thank you for coming back. If you’re new here, below are some good places to start:
Most Recent: Because of Gravity
A gentle heads up: The letter below is a deeper one about fatherhood and my own upbringing. Most of it is behind a paywall.
All poems to Myles are open to everyone and his Monthly Mylestones too, but I have paywalled these Going Deeper ones and archived past letters. Many of you have convinced me I should seek to publish these letters; putting them behind a paywall will help, but I will keep our most-read letters open to everyone.
It was never my intention to use a paywall. But I have a son to send to college one day, and I believe people want to pour into me. You can read more about this decision and my thinking in the letter below.
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Ok, on to today’s letter.
17 Months
Dear Myles,
Lately, everything I have been reading has me thinking about my father, your grandfather. I have been feeling pulled to write to you about him, and an even stronger pull to connect with him lately—I don’t know why. It feels like my body is trying to tell me something, like God is trying to tell me something.
The first time I wrote about your grandfather was in a draft of my personal statement from high school. I am sharing it with you unedited, a straight copy and paste.
As I read it now, I am reminded of the indelible scars left by him not being there, like cuts from childhood on my knees, marked by memories of something that happened but still not quite how they got there. I felt them deeply then, when he left in elementary school. I felt them when I wrote these words as a high school senior who was dreaming of being the first in his family to go to college. And I still feel them, older now, while I am raising you. I am reminded that I still have some healing to do.
Be gentle with me; this was written over 14 years ago, and I was convinced at the time that I needed to sound like someone else—convinced that whoever would be reading this held the key to my future and that I needed to erase a part of myself and the image I thought they had of me. So, I used words I never used in real life to make a stranger believe I was worth accepting.
I wish I could go back and tell myself that I was already enough. I want you to know, my son, you are more than enough—you are everything.
I love you, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Love,
Daddy
As the drops pattered against my window pane, I was awoken by the muttering from his mouth. Rising from the comfort of my bed, I hesitantly began to survey the walls of my home. As I began to walk, the small apartment seemed a bit bigger than before, almost as if a thief completed his night shift. The living room was stripped of its multiple stereos and small soccer trophies. There was a vacancy left where his belongings used to court. Leaving my mother’s jewels and flat screen SHARP television untouched, revealed to me that the thief must not have been such an intellect. When I finally reached the hallway, my eyes gazed at the once unoccupied space that was now filled with the items that belonged in the living room. “Another mistake by the thief?” I thought to myself. Leaving all the “stolen” items left in the middle of the victim’s hallway made no sense to me whatsoever. Standing in amazement at such a foolish mistake, something opened the door and slammed it almost simultaneously. His boots were ragged and his unfitted coat drenched. It was the thief. I asked him, “Where are you going?” And in one terse sentence that inflicted me forever he replied “I’m leaving Marc...”