• Yesterday, I heard a man who had done wrong during his lifetime get called a scumbag. This man had lived his life the only way he knew how. It was full of crime and injustices. He was filled with catastrophe and pain. He felt underappreciated and overzealous about the small things which he could not and should not control. He wanted control over the life of others because he had no control over his own. He wanted responsibility for the pain in others' lives because he could not accept responsibility for the pain in his own. He hurt and hurt himself and others. He hurt and hurt himself and others. He gave them the pain which he could not bear to feel on his own. He only shared what was inside of him. It had no place else to go but out of him in violence and unnecessary control. An iron fist and a steel heart controlled him, and he controlled his wife and son. Yet there was an angel in his life in the form of his own daughter. He'd never meant to hurt her. He loved and loved, yet still hurt and hurt her, even while he was not around. After his wife took control of her own life for the better of herself and her children, this man took control of others in the form of rape and murder. He hurt and hurt himself and others. He hurt and hurt himself and others. Well his daughter grew up and his mistakes caught up. Never knowing what his daughter had become, he took a risk and a bullet to the chest when he pulled a crossbow on a man in a suit and cap who was only doing his job. And as his body rots in the ground, his soul does not because it is carried by the daughter he never grew to get to know. By the daughter who hated him until he was taken and loved him when he was gone. By the daughter who was too blind to see that she was fed lies and truths in the same stories. By the daughter who was raised to hate a man who could not raise her. By the daughter who pieced her broken heart together all on her own after a man she never even knew ripped it to pieces. By the daughter who seemed to lose her own soul, but found it again when her late father's soul became her own. Now the daughter and the man's brother carry on the life that could only be lived of this man when his soul was transfered to a better-minded body.
    Yesterday, I heard a man who had done wrong during his lifetime get called a scumbag.
    Today, I hear this same man being called a hero, a savior, a warrior, a fighter, a lover, a believer, a healer, a dad.
    Today, I speak of this man as if he is my own dad, because I will not allow some being, who never knew him, call him a scumbag.
    Today, I speak of this man because he is my own dad.