10/14/15
Dad still hasn’t come home, it’s been six days now.
I keep waiting for the panic to kick in like it’s supposed to. Like normal daughters are supposed to feel when their father disappears for almost a week. But mostly the house is just… quiet. Quiet enough that I can hear the refrigerator humming from my bedroom. Quiet enough that I slept through the night for the first time in months without waking up to his drunk fits of rage or his incessant need to get himself off to his own flesh and blood.
I hate how much I love that he’s not here. I know it’s fucked up but I can’t help it. It’s the only time I ever feel peace.
There are no bottles smashing against the sink. No stomping down the hallway. No listening to figure out *which version* of him came home drunk this time. Mean violent drunk. Crying drunk. The kind that forgets my name for a second and looks at me like I ruined his life just by standing there. Or the worst one of all, predator drunk.
I’ve been leaving lights on. Taking long showers. Walking through the house without feeling like prey… and that makes me feel like a horrible person. I keep thinking maybe he’s dead in a ditch somewhere. Maybe he wrapped his truck around a tree. Maybe he went off the side of one of mountain roads. Or maybe his heart finally gave out after soaking it in whiskey for twenty years - And every time I think it, my first feeling isn’t sadness - It’s relief. What kind of person does that make me, diary?
I tried talking myself out of it yesterday. Sat in my room convincing myself I’d regret thinking these things if someone knocked on the door and told me he was gone for real. I even cried a little because I felt guilty enough that I thought maybe that meant I still loved him somewhere underneath all this anger… But then tonight I heard tires crunch outside around midnight and my entire body locked up so fast it hurt. I thought he was back, and the worst part?
*I wasn’t disappointed when the car kept driving*.
I actually sat there in the dark wishing it wasn’t him. That has to mean something is wrong with me. People always say “he’s still your dad” like that’s supposed to erase everything else. Like fathers are automatically sacred no matter what they do to you. But they don’t see him when he drinks. They don’t see the holes in the walls or the way I know how to stay perfectly silent when he’s angry. They don’t know what it feels like to listen to someone coming down the hallway and pray they pass your door. To feel the hands of your father places you shouldn’t.
I think if he never came back, eventually this house would stop feeling haunted, and I think that thought is going to rot me from the inside out.
Thanks for listening as always, diary.
Veda
