We are a generation
raised by children
raised by children.

Growing up *****.
Maybe that’s why,
we’ve been avoiding it for so long,
and passing down lessons
on how to fake it.

He was seventeen.
His mistakes were still somewhere down the road
he so relentlessly trudged through the heavy weather
after storming out of his father’s house,
eager for independence.
Unsure what that meant.

He is my father -
responsible for all that I knew for sure as stable.
Yet, our table was held up by coasters
and we had a few too many late nights
sitting on milk crates
around a kerosene heater.
Things were never steady enough
to worry about them falling apart.

No one is perfect.
Although, I thought he was,
and he wanted to be
he just didn’t know how.

No one does.

This is the man who signed me up
for an in school group therapy session
in second grade
because it would get me out of class for a half an hour -
good lookin' out, Pops.

I learned from him, that life is about those little things.
There was this rule in his car about not leaving
until a good song is done playing on the radio.
It doesn’t matter what you’re late for
the world can wait.

I also learned from watching him
that life will **** your spirit.
That debt will eat you alive
only if you let it.
If you wait long enough, it’ll go into collections
eventually they will stop calling
and that’s all you really want.

I learned that no matter how bad you have it.
You can always afford to show compassion.
I learned that people will walk all over you.
That doesn’t mean you should stop.

But compassion takes its toll.
Years of chronic depression skewed my view of him.
At fourteen years old I became comfortable with the idea
that I might one day walk in on my dad hanging from a ceiling fan.
My only reassurance
was when he told me
“I won’t **** myself…I’m afraid it would hurt too much.”

I learned that love fades and sometimes stops cold
but that doesn’t mean you should give up on it.
I learned that sometimes there’s a good reason
to suffer through a bad marriage.
But once that reason doesn’t hold true
it’s time to break away, for your own sanity -
even that means breaking a heart in the process.

Then my Mother came back into the picture
slashing through his Achilles’ heel.
Watching my father fall was not an easy thing to see
but this wasn’t just my Mother’s doing
this was years in the making.
This was a poorly built Janga tower.
This was just a matter of time.

My sister told me,
in a rare moment of bonding
on stormy night,
while stuck at a Denny’s,
that she thinks it started
when his best friend died
a whole lifetime ago.

She shared stories about her memories of him
She got to see him play
and laugh because he felt like laughing
and not just to forget he has reasons to cry.
I envy her for that.

To me this was the man he'd always been
but in these weakest moments,
I saw myself.
For the first time in my life,
I truly don't want to be like him.
It hurts to admit that.

A man once said
that once you realize your parents aren’t perfect
you become an adolescent,
when you forgive them, you become an adult,
and when you forgive yourself
you become wise.

I feel no need to forgive my father.
I accept that he is human
and that he didn’t teach me the things he didn’t know.
What I did learn from him are the important things:
the value of compassion,
the pain of regret,
the unconditional love of a parent,
and most importantly
that stability is an expensive illusion
and bad things happen
to those who take theirs for granted.