"More than a stunning debut. It is the announcement of a bold new literary voice"
—Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

It’s 3 A.M. I know writing this letter at such an ungodly hour won’t make any sense to you. It won’t make any sense to you even if I write at 6 in the morning or 10 in the night. However, it will make sense to me. At least that’s what I think or perhaps I would like to think like that.

Di, I love you for as long as I can remember. Of course not the kind that would make me want to make love with you. It’s the one that makes me totally comfortable to you; The one that makes me feel that you are listening to me; The one that makes me feel that you are here to hug me and make me feel okay even if you are broken up inside.

You know, writing, this letter to you, has taken me back in time to 6th Grade and those dark nights of winter and the strange city with no friend by my side. I guess, you would be happy to know that the only thing that brought me a little peace was shutting the world around me and peeking inside your world for hours. And I remember feeling that it’s not really dissimilar from the world I had ephemerally pretended to escape from.

I wish it wasn’t that way, but, you know Di, what unites us is that our parents parted ways from each other when we were young. Your father won your custody but my father lost mine. I guess that’s when he lost all the interest in me or maybe he was never interested in me. So, um I can’t make out what it’s like to live with a father but I am pretty much acquainted with what it’s like to live with a single parent.

I understand what it’s like to belong to a broken home and I am aware of the insecurity it holds and the bouts of wretchedness you feel when you find out that the individuals that were supposed to comfort you are the ones filling you with discomfort and the friends you counted on to mend your heart are the ones breaking it in a million little pieces.

I know, you cried. I have cried too. Like occasionally, behind the doors and on washroom floors and on the sea shores. The thing is that this salty liquid hardly ever makes a way out of my eyes. I don’t know if that makes me strong or weak. I don’t really want to know about it. I want to know what you would have thought of me. Would you have hugged me or cried with me?

I wonder if you ever imagined your mom coming and things falling back in place. I never imagined my dad coming and making things fine. Maybe because there was never even a tiny miny trace of love. You know, I find it funny when girls around me go like, “I am daddy’s princess.” The thing is that he has never been my father let alone daddy so it’s natural that I have never felt like his daughter let alone his princess.

The only relationship that I have with him exists on birth certificate, passport and ID card. And if there is something more, it’s that if I ever died in plane crash and my face gets distorted, the doctors could conduct a DNA test or two and establish that there is a biological relationship between this man and the girl who is right here, reposing dead. That’s it – a genetic relationship by default, which I can’t do a thing about.

I want to tell you something but I can’t exactly recall the grade I was in. I guess it was 6th or 7th grade. So what happened was that, the teacher started this little chat encouraging us to tell him if we are close to our mothers or fathers. I didn’t feel like participating in the discussion because the theme of the conversation made me massively uncomfortable to speak. Maybe it wasn’t the fear of speaking but the paralyzing fear of not being able to utter a word or of blurting it all out and bursting into red hot tears. So I sat quietly listening to what my class fellows had to say.

The teacher went on talking about how fathers are more playful than moms are and other stuff describing typical traits of a good father. I wanted the conversation to end because with every word, I felt inflated with discomfort. I don’t know if the very word ‘father’ gave me sour sensations or the person associated with that very word. I guess it had been a complicated combination of both.

When the teacher finally reached out for me and his lips uttered my name, my heart almost sank and I felt asphyxiated. He asked who I am close to. I told him, in just a few words and a barely audible tone, that I am fond of my mom. He smiled and told me about how he heard most girls being close to their fathers. I don’t know what exactly I said but I guess I incoherently repeated the words I said earlier. My mind doesn’t let me recall what happened next but Di, I can tell you how I felt – the kind of bad that even black chocolates can’t help.

At some other time and again, I can’t recollect the grade I was in. Maybe 7th or 8th or 9th or 10th. I remember sitting on the floor behind the library bookshelf and skimming through an encyclopedia. A random girl or maybe my friend came and sat beside me and started talking. I started talking too. Then out of the blue, she asked about where my dad works. At that moment, my heart stood still and I felt suffocated. However, since it was just she and I, I didn’t feel massively uncomfortable.

So I quickly told her all I know about him – his name and that he is an engineer and he works for some dumb international airline. That’s all she needed to know but that’s just too little to what I should have known.

You know Di, the thing that I can’t figure it out if it is normal to feel profoundly the sufferings of a person you have never met. That’s the way I feel about you. I feel so close to you. You are like the wool, the warm wool, the warm woolen blanket that I can wrap around myself on a cold winter night and hide my head into and abandon the cold world. You said anyone can call on to you and you will be there. So whenever I feel sad and I have no one to talk to, I open my diary, I find you and I start confiding in you.

The other midnight I laid on the floor mat and stared blankly at the ceilings and wondered if you have ever felt so distant to a person you were supposed to feel close with? I guess you did. I know you did. That’s how I feel about my father. I think of him as a man who just loaned his sperm to my mom and never bothered to look back at the baby born.

I wonder if you were here, sitting right in front of me, what would you have said?

Return if possible.