{"id":718,"date":"2016-06-19T20:14:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-19T20:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/dear-dad-9\/"},"modified":"2016-06-19T20:14:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T20:14:00","slug":"dear-dad-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/dear-dad-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I never really knew you. When I was younger, I used to pretend that you had to leave  Mom, Laura, Cam, and I because you were secretly a government agent and were out there in the world doing cool spy things, but you&#8217;d always come back for my music recitals and be watching somewhere within the crowd, proud of me. It&#8217;s a nice thought. Better than believing that you just abandoned your family because of the drugs and booze. I still don&#8217;t understand how someone could chose that life over your wife, daughters, and son. I honestly don&#8217;t get why substances that can hold that kind of power and control over someone are allowed to exist. I wish they didn&#8217;t so I wouldn&#8217;t have to imagine what our lives would have been like. I&#8217;m not angry anymore. I&#8217;m not even that sad. I feel bad for you. That you let something control your life so fully that you ended up missing out on so much awesomeness that is my family. Your would-have-been family. I just wanted to say that I forgive you because as of yesterday I have finished my first year of high school. I&#8217;m a Sophomore now. With all of these &#8220;identity activities&#8221; the high school and teachers are making us do I feel forgiving and resting that chapter of my life is the right thing. My entire family, mostly my mom, says how much I look and act like you. But I am not you. I am me, and I am going to go to college and make films after I graduate. I will not let what controlled you and your entire family effect me. I am going to redefine our family name and myself because I  am whoever I want to be. Just like the character Laurel did in this amazing book I finished a few days ago. Wherever you are, I forgive you. And I hope your happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I never really knew you. When I was younger, I used to pretend that you had to leave Mom, Laura, Cam, and I because you were secretly a government agent and were out there in the world doing cool spy things, but you&#8217;d always come back for my music recitals and be watching somewhere within [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love-letters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}