the ordinary world
He never meant this much to you before.
He never actually meant much to you at all. He was never around… at least, not when you really wanted him to be. Your childhood went past, and all you ever saw of him was an occasional bearded face sitting in the living room on Sundays. Come those rebellious teenage years, and there was never anyone to rebel against. Adults were people who might have been from another planet altogether, the only one you ever saw on a constant basis being the nurse who raised you and taught you everything you needed to know. There was no such thing as school and friends; those things belonged to an outside world that was only written about in books. Those things weren’t real to you. They belonged to a world that you could never have.
You knew that there was an ordinary world, but for some reason, he didn’t want you to be part of it.
When he died, however, that’s when you realized why he kept you hidden away from the world, the big, bad world. He wanted you to be his perfect princess, whom he could look upon in secret. He wanted you to be his innocent little girl forever. You only realized this when you looked down into the coffin and saw his smiling face, when you read the letter that he had left for you.
All he was doing was protecting you. All he was doing was being a father.