My father BANNED me from his wedding because I looked like my MOTHER.

He kept trying to make conversation, asking about my new apartment, my job at the bookstore, and whether I was still thinking about graduate school. He was talking like we were casual acquaintances catching up.

He acted like he hadn’t just erased me from the most important day of his life. Nathan didn’t say a word to him the entire time.

When we finished loading the last box, Dad asked if we could talk soon. I told him I’d think about it.

Nathan started the truck and we left Dad standing in his driveway still trying to pretend everything was normal. I moved into the studio on a Tuesday afternoon.

I carried boxes up three flights of stairs because the building didn’t have an elevator. The apartment was smaller than I’d expected, just one room with a bathroom and a tiny kitchen in the corner.

But it was mine, and Dad had no say over who could visit or when I could pick up my belongings. I spent the first week sleeping on an air mattress and eating takeout because I didn’t own furniture yet.

Nadia brought over some dishes her mom was getting rid of and stayed to help me unpack. She asked if I’d thought about talking to someone professional about everything that happened.

I told her I was fine, but she gave me this look that said she didn’t believe me. That weekend, I woke up crying from a dream where Dad was teaching me to ride a bike and when I looked up he was gone.

I called three therapists on Monday and the first one had an opening that Thursday. Her office was in a converted house near campus, painted yellow with plants on every surface.

She introduced herself and asked what brought me in. I started explaining about the wedding and couldn’t stop talking for 40 minutes straight.

She listened without interrupting and when I finally ran out of words, she said something that made my chest hurt. She said, “Dad’s choice to exclude me wasn’t a reflection of my worth but of his inability to stand up to manipulation.”

She said, “Healthy people don’t demand their partners cut off their children.”

She said Dad choosing to comply showed weakness in him, not a flaw in me. I cried for the rest of the session because I’d been carrying this weight that somehow I’d done something wrong by looking like Mom.

The weeks passed and October turned into November. Coraline called to invite me to Thanksgiving at her house because she wasn’t about to sit at Dad and Britney’s table after what happened.

She’d invited Dad too, but he’d already committed to spending the holiday with Britney’s family in Connecticut. I told her I’d come and she sounded relieved.

Thanksgiving morning, I drove to Coraline’s house and found Nathan already there with his wife and kids. My cousins hugged me and asked where Grandpa Roger was.

Nathan told them he was busy this year. We ate turkey and sweet potatoes, and Coraline made Dad’s favorite stuffing recipe, but nobody mentioned that he wasn’t there to eat it.

After dinner, Nathan’s oldest daughter asked if she could video call Grandpa to show him her new dance routine. Coraline and Nathan exchanged looks, and Nathan said maybe another time.

I helped clean up and Coraline cornered me in the kitchen. She said Dad had turned down the invitation without even asking if I’d be there, like he’d already decided to keep choosing Britney’s comfort over family.

I told her it hurt more than I expected, even though I didn’t want to see him anyway. She hugged me and said Dad was making a mistake he’d regret someday, but that didn’t make it hurt less right now.

The next week, Nadia stopped by my apartment with coffee and said she’d run into someone who knew Britney from work. The coworker had recognized Britney’s name and said this wasn’t the first time Britney had done something like this.

Apparently, Britney had dated a guy for three years before Dad, and the relationship ended because the guy had a sister who refused to disappear from his life. Britney had given him the same ultimatum: her or his sister.

When he wouldn’t choose, she left. The coworker said everyone at their office knew Britney had control issues and there had been concerns about how she talked about Dad’s family during wedding planning.

Nadia asked if I wanted her to tell Dad, but I said no. He wouldn’t believe it, and even if he did, he’d already made his choice.

What good would it do to tell him his new wife had a pattern of isolating men from their families when he’d already let her isolate him from me? I started noticing things on social media that made my stomach hurt.

Dad used to post photos of family dinners and soccer games from when I was younger. His profile picture had been the two of us at my high school graduation for three years.

Now his profile picture was him and Britney on their honeymoon. Every post was about Britney, places they’d gone together, meals they’d cooked, and weekend trips to wineries.

He’d archived or deleted every photo that showed his life before her. There were no pictures of Nathan or Coraline and no throwback posts about family holidays.

There was nothing that proved he’d had a daughter or siblings or any existence before Britney entered his life. It was like he was rewriting his history, building this new perfect life where she was his only family and his past was something to be erased.

I showed Nathan during one of our coffee meetups and he got quiet. He said Dad had unfriended half the family on social media after the wedding, keeping only the people who hadn’t criticized his choice.

Nathan said it reminded him of how people acted in controlling relationships, cutting off anyone who might point out the problems. My therapist suggested writing Dad a letter explaining how his choice had affected me.

She said I didn’t have to send it and that the point was processing my feelings by putting them into words. I sat down with my laptop one evening and started typing.

The words came faster than I expected. I wrote about feeling erased, about watching him choose comfort over courage, and about grieving the father I thought I had.

I wrote about the Cuban restaurant and Friday movie nights and how he’d learned to braid hair from YouTube because he wanted me to feel normal after Mom left.

I wrote about how he’d promised we were a team and then abandoned that team the second someone prettier came along. I wrote about Britney calling me his painful history and him not defending me.

I wrote 10 pages before I ran out of things to say. I saved the document but didn’t send it; just writing it made something loosen in my chest.