He Didn't Tell Me How To Live; he Lived, And Let Me Watch Him Do It.

A father is always making his baby into a little woman.  And when she is a woman he turns her back again.  ~Enid Bagnold

This is just depressing. I don't know why I can't let it all go completely without chasing after it... Without chasing after him...

Everybody says it's okay, that's life... But it's easy for them to say that I have to move on because the have no idea how painful it is to lose a father. After all, they still have theirs.

I can't help but be jealous when I see my classmates being driven to school by their Dads, because I've never had that experience. When wedding bells ring and a bride walks down the aisle, arms linked with her Dad's, it pushes me on the verge of crying... Because I will never experience that. I may be able to ask the orchestra to play Dance With My Father or Butterfly Kisses, things like this can be faked, but not the emotions I would feel when I'm dancing, twirling in some other man's arms.

No one can replace my father. It hurts me when people nudge me and whisper "there goes your new Dad" then point to my Mom's new man. It makes me cringe. How can they be so heartless, so insensitive about my feelings? Aren't they aware of the weeping thirteen year old hidden beneath my grown up facade? Because I, I can feel her presence inside me. She is grieving, even until now, and I guess she always will. My hair might have grown longer, my limbs taller, my body leaner, but deep inside, emotionally, I have never really grown. I'm still that thirteen year old, caged in my emotions, dealing with my mourn alone. Because seven years canot erase the fact that I'm blaming myself for this horrific loss that our family has gone through.

No one really speaks about him at home. When someone does, it is indirect and casual, as if they are talking about an old television set, or something that passed naturally. I don't think I need to analyze why; it's pretty clear. No one can talk about him and the things he did in the past, because no one can laugh about it. Because saying "he used to" would confirm everything. It would knock on our heads and deliver a mail saying he really is gone. And we don't want that to happen. For us, he lives on. We may not be the type of family who still sets a plate in the dining table for him, but we are living in a delicate bubble where all we do is smile and dream and convince ourselves that he is alive, and that's what helps us get through each day.

I cannot, and might never grasp the fact that he is completely gone. In my heart, he is alive. In my heart, it is always June 20, 2003, a day before his accident. A day where he was at home, helping my aunts rearrange the funiture while I was curled up in a ball in the sofa, reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. It was the last time we ate lunch together, and after that day, nothing stayed the same. Ever since he was gone, there's an aching hollow in my chest, an empty seat in the dining table, a gap in the family that used to form a perfect circle.

Ironically, the last perfect day of my life reaches its seventh anniversary today, June 20, 2010. And it's Fathers Day.