When I was in school I got in trouble for something stupid. I handed my dad the letter and he held it for a minute, looking at me. I braced for my punishment. Instead he handed it straight back to me — unopened — and said: “I know that whatever it says in here is not who you are. And I know you can do better.”
That is my dad in one moment. He didn’t need to open it because he already knew me. That’s what it feels like to be truly seen by someone.
My dad is my dad. He raised me. He loved me. He chose me — completely, unconditionally, and against anyone else’s opinions or reservations about whether I belonged. He smelled like Old Spice and coffee.
He had a way of making you feel seen and safe. He had a song for every single situation life handed him. And he made sure I always had a place. Always.
I know that peeling back the layers of plaster and paint he put up to protect me feels like digging at something that was buried for me and never meant to be retrieved. When I feel that familiar fear creeping in — like I’m about to get in trouble for saying too much — I come back to that letter.
I am allowed to tell my story. And telling it does not take one thing away from the man who gave me a safe and loving childhood.
If anything it is because of him that I can do this at all.
My dad spent years shielding me from Chuck. Patching the wound carefully and lovingly so I could grow up without the damage Chuck intended to leave behind. He erased him the way you patch drywall — smoothed over, painted, invisible. He did it out of love. I understand that now in a way I couldn’t when I was small.
But Chuck is different.
The simple answers I was given as a child — “he got in trouble,” “he can’t be around or have children anymore” — don’t hold up the same way anymore. I don’t have to guess what he’s capable of. I lived it. And so did Jonah. What Jonah carried didn’t stay in the past. It stayed with him in ways that were deep and lasting and not something you just move on from. And yeah, it stayed with me too — until I decided to face it and no longer let Chuck have any sort of power over me.
For as long as I can remember my Aunt would sometimes stop what she was doing and look at me and say: “That was the worst case of child abuse ever in the State of Ohio at the time. Chelsea, you lost all your hair from stress. That was a lot for a little girl.” And I would stay silent, hoping for more. Hoping a hug followed. Something. But like most of my history it was dropped on me in small doses. No follow up expected.
Later, when I started this journey in 2018, I heard it again from a different source — how bad it was, how we were hospitalized, malnourished, old injuries and new ones. Knowing this, and knowing the gaps, and knowing what I know now, has haunted me ever since.
So when I say I have questions, when I say things don’t sit right, it is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from experience. From memory. From things I saw and felt and am still unpacking. I am not an outsider looking in. I am someone who was there.
And that is why I can’t let this go.
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About a week before my dad died he was still alert. I went to give him a hug, my Aunt behind me telling me to hurry up and leave. I leaned in close and whispered: “You’re my favorite.”
He whispered back: “I know.”
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He died on April 25th, 2008.
Jonah was found dead in his apartment four hours later. Same day.
I am telling this story for both of them. And I think if my dad were here he would hand this back to me — unopened — and tell me he already knows it’s my story to tell.
He would tell me I can do better than staying silent.
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