You were always like a brick wall, never giving anything back. So rigid, so unloving, I don't understand how my sister got the other side of you, the side with smiles and a relationship. I don't know what I did wrong, if anything.
I don't know how long I would search for you-maybe until I could erase the image of you lying in the coffin, or until the past was erased, but the past can not be erased or changed. What's done is done. I can see the stark image of you lying in the coffin, and I know all my tries are over.
What I have left are scraps of memories, your obituary, and 2 Polaroids that somehow get plastered to the fridge, no matter how many times I take them down. In one of them I am kissing your cheek and your just beaming. You would have thought it was a beginning of a beautiful relationship, but I just couldn't let go of the past. That kiss, that moment, that high transformed into a dark valley, and that picture may be the only proof I have that you loved me.
I remember we were sitting at the bar at Applebees. You wanted to learn about my life, my husband, and my baby. All I could think is how ironic it was we were sitting at a bar, while all I could think of was transforming into a little girl, so I could finally sit on your lap and cuddle with you. I just couldn't let go of the past, and I asked you if you loved me. It may have been the millionth time you mentioned that the past is the past and it was just a soap opera. You abruptly paid the bartender and told me you were driving home to Buffalo tonight.
I begged you to stay. I promised I would be good. Promised I would tell you about my life, but you told me it was too late. I am so angry how could you leave? You were driving me back home and I just screamed, "I just want to know if you love me?" And you screamed back, "Of course, I love you." You said it like it was a given in a geometry equation. I sobbed all the way home, and I sobbed as you left. I begged you to stay. You left me crying on the doorstep. I stood there and watched you leave.
Did you drive all the way through to Buffalo? Did you get a hotel? Did you cry too? These things I can never ask you.
We didn't talk for years. When my sister got married, I called you and asked you if we could spend some time together alone. Your response was, "Haven't we tried that already?" When you became ill, you began calling me. I didn't know you were sick. It was my mom who mentioned to me that when people think they are dying they try to reconnect. I was so ecstatic to talk to you. I was going to invite you to my college graduation, but instead I had to settle for your class ring around my neck.
Did you know I missed the first few days of my last semester to be at your funeral? I would have rather made the trip to tell you goodbye, to tell you I loved you, and to hear the words," I love you, Kara." You knew you were dying, even a phone call would have sufficed, but you just gave up and died.
If we really want to face the truth, you were ill, incapable of showing emotion, incapable of showing love. You were crippled by depression. You were punishing yourself, slowly killing yourself for letting us be given away, for allowing another man to give us his name. You have been killing yourself with drugs and alcohol for years, and that is the one thing that you succeeded with.
You just gave up. You stopped drawing or making anything artistic. You just sat on your leather couch with your cat and drank yourself to death. Good job Daddy, you did it. I wish you would have fought, if not for me, for yourself. No Daddy you didn't fight, you became entangled with your emotions. You let them strangle you, and you tried to drown them. You just laid down and fucken died.
Now I can search out my family tree, and see that beast, and I see it devoured you, and I vow it will not devour me. No matter how many times my emotions cripple me, I realize over and over again that even if I do not want to live my life for me. I have a child who needs me and loves me, and the time to break the cycle is now.
I have to be present and accessible for her. I have to take my medication to keep the beast at bay. I have to seek out help when I need it. I have to connect with her, and others. She needs me and I am not going to stamp her with my rejection.I need to show her how to live, especially if the beast comes and visits her.
Not only that I have to live for me. I need to be more than a shell that eats and sleeps. I am not going to give up and slowly die, slowly commit suicide because I am too much of a coward to end it quickly. No Daddy; I am going to fight.
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