Virgin Memory
(My Father, Rewritten Through Love)
I used to think remembering my father meant understanding everything that hurt about him. I would replay the story of addiction like I could solve it if I looked at it from enough angles, like if I understood it deeply enough I could turn it into something clean. But all it ever did was exhaust me. It kept me circling pain instead of love.
Now I understand something simpler, something I used to miss because I was looking for complexity. My father was not only what broke. He was also what held. He was also what loved.
I remember the way he hugged me after nightmares, like he understood fear without needing me to explain it. I remember the softness in moments I didn’t know were important at the time. I remember laughter that didn’t ask for anything in return. I remember being his daughter in a way that felt certain, even when everything else in life felt uncertain. He comes to me in dreams sometimes, not as an explanation, not as a lesson, but as presence. Just the feeling of being held again. And I think for a long time I searched for proof that I was abandoned, because it was easier to understand pain than it was to trust love. But now I find myself doing something different. I look for proof that I was loved, and I keep finding it in places I didn’t expect.
Somewhere along the way I stopped trying to rewrite him and started remembering him correctly.
I also stopped trying to rewrite myself.
There was a time I said I wanted my “virginity” back, but what I meant was I wanted to feel untouched by experiences that made love feel confusing. I wanted to feel whole again, like my body and my mind belonged to me in the same way at the same time. But I understand now that what I was really searching for was clarity. A clean way of seeing the world again. A way to separate love from harm. Presence from fear.
That is what feels different now. Not that life didn’t happen, but that I can see it without it distorting everything in front of me. My father didn’t leave me with chaos as his final message. He left me with love that I can still recognize when I stop looking for what is missing and start noticing what was always there
