Two weeks ago I took some time off everything (school/work), flew to New York with my father and saw some relatives, some I hadn’t seen in over a decade, others I had never met. My father only came to visit this side of the globe for ten days (he lives in Guam) and it had been two years since I’d seen him last. It’s always like this, I get two weeks for every two years. When I saw him this time however, I realized how much he had changed. I now see what I refused to acknowledge before: the relationship I have with my dad is unraveling to the rhythm of a strobe light, one that blacks out for two years and lights up for two weeks. Every time I see him again, it’s like someone hit the fast forward button.
It’s always so much easier to bury things. Bury feelings, bury thoughts, bury the pain caused by it all. I pretend I don’t miss him, I pretend I don’t care, I pretend my life is unaltered by the fact he left when I was eight. All lies, but it hurts less when you don’t think about it.
Every two years I see you again, briefly, before you walk out of my life again with a piece of my heart stuck to the bottom of your shoe. As you walk away, it tears, but you can’t hear it, you don’t see the pain all over my face or maybe you just don’t want to. After you’re no longer in sight, I turn around and resume my life the way it was before your arrival, the way it’s been since the day you left, sixteen years ago. I imagine you, on the other side of the world, are resuming your life with your new daughter. I miss you Dad and no matter whom I throw myself at to fill the void created by your absence, hoping somehow I’ll get sewn back together, it’s just not you, even if I don’t really know who you are anymore. No, I find myself still torn apart.
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