a letter...

Dear Dad:

Coming to visit you is probably the most quiet and soothing thing I've done these past few weeks.

My world continues to change, and I find myself always pitted against the events before me - why must things always break apart? It's as if your passing continues to frame my feelings of being alone, the pervasive sense I always carry that no one can ever understand. Even the best of my friends are at a loss to comprehend it's depth... it's magnitude.

No matter how much I want to believe in others, they can never carry my burdens, or even understand them. Just this past week, even as I endeavored to help someone out of mere kindness, those who are supposed to be closest wounded me with their utter lack of sympathy. Even my own kin.

Is my disappointment an inevitable end of trying to trust more fully those that I love?

At times, it feels like I clutch daggers plunged into my chest - daggers whose handles are clutched by those that claim to love me. If only I could forget easier, but the memories of each scar stretch long, across the days, weeks, and even months - the memories never sleep, because there's always a fresh wound to be given. Circumstances inevitably bring forth another opportunity for people to piss on me again.

Of course, human interaction is never ideal. But the disappointments have never been balanced by hope; there is no fount of wisdom, no relief I can seek elsewhere in my life. Instead, there is the gaping void of your absence for me to consult while those sons more fortunate than I turn to a father, an uncle, or a mentor to speak the sage advice that gives clarity, and even lacking that... comfort. There's no balm for the pain I feel, just the numbness that comes and goes as I sit on the edge, peering down into the abyss.

I wonder at times if your absence in my life was meant as some sort of circumstance to force me into a closer relationship with HIM, yet continually, I struggle to maintain even the smallest interaction. Even as great changes loom in the distance, I face daily this silence that has always haunted the steps of my spiritual journey. It seems the faster I try to run to catch the truth, the further it pulls away.

Yet still, this sense of an eternal reality ordained beyond physical senses remains with me and I can't escape it, no matter how much easier I'd imagine my life would feel without it. It's an itch I can't ignore, even as it compels me to do the unthinkable - to leave Seattle for a year. I wonder what you would say to me.

No matter what, I'll be sure to visit you whenever I'm in town. Maybe you'll have something to say to me then.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

-Gar.


posted by G at 2:24 AM   |

in?scrip?tion (n-skrip-shun)n.
1. The act or an instance of inscribing.
2. Something, such as the wording on a coin, medal, monument, or seal, that is inscribed.
3. A short, signed message in a book or on a photograph given as a gift.
4. The usually informal dedication of an artistic work.
5. Jeremiah 31:33