My Awkward Life

I wrote this on Father’s Day, but then I got up and never came back to it.

Today is my 16th Father’s Day without my dad. June 9th was his birthday. He would’ve been 51. The night before I had a dream that my Uncle Yugo (his brother) had messaged me on WhatsApp. The conversation was like this:

Anyway, the picture he sent me wasn’t this picture. It was like the same background, but it was a close up of his bust area and he was closer to the palm trees and he was just looking into the camera with the sun in his eyes, but he was kind of in the shade. I don’t really know, it’s weird now that I’m analyzing it, but it wasn’t weird at the time. He also hadn’t aged which I didn’t question either.

I remember thinking in my dream: “Okay, I’m gonna go see him. Where is he? Where has he been? What’s going on?” I felt so sad, hurt, sick, happy, relieved, betrayed, angry, and confused all at the same time. I felt like one of those pictures where it starts out as one person’s face and then morphs into someone else’s face. I was nauseous and feeling like I wanted to puke, but there’s no time to waste. I need to figure out where he is and go. NOW!!! My adrenaline was rushing and I was feeling an insane rush of excitement and then…I woke up. For a few seconds, that excitement had carried over into my waking life and I was thinking, “Okay, what should I wear? What do I pack? Why am I still in bed? Why am I wasting time?”

Reality struck and I had to remind myself: that’s just a dream and it’s not real. He’s still dead.

I remember, for years… YEARS, not believing he was gone, sometimes I still don’t. Maybe it’s because I never saw his body? Maybe it’s because I still can’t fathom how someone can be alive and well one minute and then the next minute they’re just…like, gone? What the fuck? How does that even work? Nothing is instant in this world. How is that possible?

I always used to think that there was this elaborate plan, something like a witness protection plan he was in. I used to imagine that he was somewhere in paradise, somewhere beautiful, living his life to the fullest. Sad and empty because he lost contact with all of his family and friends, but overall, he’s alive and it’s great because he’s alive. He’s alive.

He bought me a golden necklace when I was like 11 or 12. It has a cross on it with a dove in the middle. I remember I only wanted the chain because I never believed in God even though I went to Catholic school from Pre-K to 5th grade and would walk to Church every Tuesday morning with my class. I just never believed in it and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get me to believe. He told me I needed to get the cross with the necklace so that God would protect me or something like that. I agreed because it was the classic styled chain that everybody was wearing at the time (with the long oval shape and then three smaller hoops). I asked for the silver one because that’s what everyone else had, but he wanted me to have gold because it looked nicer. He bought me a matching bracelet which would fall off a lot, but somehow, I never lost it. I wore that necklace every day and I tried to wear just the chain without the cross pendant, but it felt wrong and incomplete. I stopped wearing it for a while because I was experimenting with other jewelry and trying to find my style, but after he died, I wore it all of the time. When I would hold the cross in my hand, I felt like he was hugging me and like this warm wave of comfort would wash over me. I can’t wear it anymore because my neck has turned into a tree trunk on testosterone and the last time I tried, it looked like a choker and quite frankly, it did start to choke me. Maybe it’s a literal metaphor for how my grief has started to catch up with me again.

It’s hard to live when the other half of you isn’t alive anymore. It’s hard to smile when I can’t feel anymore. I think I’m just depressed lately and it’s just hard. My little sister has been sending me letters he wrote to me and pictures of him that I had never seen before which prompted me to go look at all of the photos I have saved of him on my computer. I recognized him in all of them, but I’m starting to feel like I never knew him. I mean, I didn’t. I only really learned his birthday after he died. I would wish him a happy birthday because my mom would remind me and tell me to call him, but I never remembered on my own. I never knew his favorite color, his favorite song, or anything about him that mattered. When Sheila asks me questions about him, I don’t know the answer and it’s quite embarrassing, to say the least. I’m so sad and torn up about this guy and I never knew him. When I was just looking at all of his photos, I’m thinking: “I feel like a stalker who has collected all of these photos of this random man’s life and I’ve kept them in this folder on my computer.” And then I realized that there will never be a new picture taken of him. What is out there is out there. That’s it. And maybe most of it has been lost because it wasn’t common to carry a camera in your pocket like it is now. It’s just weird and hurtful.

Another thing is that this is all feeling routine and old.

“My dad is dead.”

“My dad died in a car accident.”

“I don’t have a dad anymore. He’s not here. He’s gone. He’s never coming back. This is my life, my life without a dad.”

BLAH BLAH BLAH

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This is it. This is all it’ll ever be. This is my life.

I’ve said the same thing over and over throughout the years that it’s kind of lost its meaning and it just feels like something I say. Like when someone asks me what my name is or when my birthday is, I just automatically blurt it out as if my mouth and my brain are no longer connected. I don’t have to think about it, it’s just there. Well, sometimes I have to think about it, but most of the time, I don’t. Now I’m probably going to be thinking about it.

There’s always going to be a hole in my heart where he was supposed to love me until he got very old and we were supposed to make memories together. No matter how many times I try to fill the void, it just stays empty.

I like to think when I have kids, the love I feel for them will help me heal because I will understand how he felt for me, but I don’t really know.