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Chris fell asleep on my couch again. His fear about losing me had kept his exhaustion at bay, but in its absence, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. It didn’t help that it was actually getting pretty late. The late summer sun had long since retreated, and a glance outside at the darkened world would make one think that even the moon had called it at night. I knew I should have also been going to bed, maybe even with Chris, but I couldn’t. I still had some work to finish.
By my estimation, this work couldn’t wait, though I knew a counterargument existed. I knew how important it was to rest and give the mind a break. But that adage seemed overly simplistic. It didn’t include the sorts of trials that are not made easier for having a full night’s rest. In fact, being fully alert might have just made my situation worse. It would have meant being able to notice all the details, too many of the details, which included the ones that made you feel uneasy or carried some sort of threat.
Never mind the fact that sometimes time was just not on your side. And that night, I had to strike while I was somewhat ready and willing to walk through that fire. And it would help to have company, to have someone there to keep the worst of the phantoms away, even if he was asleep.
When I copied the email drafts from Dad’s computer, I knew but didn’t think about the fact that there would be messages to the many women I didn’t want to exist: the many mistresses or affair partners, whenever the terminology was, that he had over the years. It was just ‘his way,’ as my mom would have put it. He just was what he was.
There was no reason to think Dad had set them aside or deleted them. Even when he knew he was dying, he wasn’t trying to get his stuff in order, to erase his secrets, or to gather up the things Mom and I needed to have on hand. As a result, I knew I was probably going to get my heart broken again.
But I accepted that fate and opened the folder of old email drafts again and started through them in the same random fashion I had before. And yet, at first, I got through it all unscathed. The emails I opened were largely innocuous. There was an email to the travel agent who helped book Grandma Sarah’s flight when she moved in. There were general service inquiries into companies and requests for legal consultations in one round or another of the many battles about Charity’s custodial arrangement or child support. Dad and Miss Sharon usually fought about child support payments. He wanted to get the amount he owed lowered for any number of reasons. A few of them made sense. Like how at some point, Charity stopped going to the private school she used to always brag about, and Dad thought his payments should reflect the new reality Miss Sharon had created when she pulled Charity out.
I closed those drafts as quickly as I had clicked them and moved them into a folder named Already Checked where they would be out of my sight and mind. There was no need to look at those things again or to think about Charity and how complicated co-parenting could be. I already had a sense of what she had been though, glimpses I caught through the fire of her rage. I didn’t want to sit with those memories any longer than I had too. And if I had to guess, she would rather that I not.
All the while, Chris–rolled up into a ball on the couch–kept sleeping. As each email was banished from view, I would glance at him and watch his slow, measured breaths. The sight was comforting, but I wasn’t sure why. Then again, that relief did not deserve to be questioned, only appreciated.
I kept clicking. I kept diving into the small puddles of my father’s thoughts, these one-sided conversations that were hard to make sense of. And with each document, my hopes slowly unraveled. It was all too broken and fragmented for me to understand what that conversation had been about.
But occasionally I found a name I could pull, a date I could note, or some other scrap of information that might help me later. And each time I made one of those discoveries, I desperately clutched the pen as it darted across the page. I felt the muscles in my wrist protest the intensity with which I worked. I heard the soft cry of irritation and frustration, but I ignored it. I had to. There was nothing I could do. And it was just a burst of energy for the moment, a brief flutter of activity before the note would be made, the moment passed, and I would return to the sea of nothingness.
As I closed out of an inquiry into some old record player Dad thought about buying, Chris stirred. My breath caught as I watched as he shifted his body and rolled over. Only when he settled again did I release the air in my lungs. Only when he settled did I do the same. Then I opened the next email.
Hello Love, it started.
My heart sank. I knew exactly what it was and how it would go. Read one letter your father wrote to a mistress, and you might as well have read them all.
In it, he will tell this other woman that either your mother left, died, or just doesn’t matter to him. He will downplay the union that created you. And maybe he will do something similar to you. He will pretend that you don’t exist or somehow don’t need to be considered. Or maybe he will say that you are older than you were at the time and didn’t need to be supervised or parented too much. He will minimize the role you have in his life because your presence is effectively a hurdle when it comes to getting laid. And that is his priority. He’d rather risk making another child than tend to you, his current child.
And why is that? You won’t think it has something to do with him or with his less-than-ideal priorities. You will think it’s you, entirely you. You did something wrong or weren’t enough because how could your father who you thought was perfect in every way somehow make a mistake that terrible. It’s not him. It can’t be him. He’s perfect. You had decided he was perfect. And it’s easier to hate yourself than it is to pull apart the threads of the world you sewed, a world in which he’s perfect.
Because it wasn’t like you didn’t already suspect that you weren’t good enough. You knew you weren’t. You had realized that fact long ago through unrelated incidents. But it had come up. Repeatedly. You weren’t good enough. You never were. And the world was made worse by everyone–or a few specific people, the ones that loved you the most including said father–pretending that wasn’t the case.
As I stared at that email draft, a tightness filled my chest. I went to inhale but couldn’t breathe. My lungs were frozen in place. They were locked in and couldn’t move. They wouldn’t move. They chose to not move and stay in that constricted position where they would slowly suffocate me.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t cry. That would have required air, which I was not taking in.
So I reached for my phone. When I did so, my hand was shaking. I couldn’t feel the tremble. but I could see it as I picked up the phone. The flat, sleek design of the device made the quiver even more obvious. But on the whole, my body was weak. Every ounce of strength I normally had was disappearing, fleeing into some distant corner of my body where it couldn’t be reached.
And so, I gave up on trying to text my mom, on trying to tell her that I finally understood her point. It was easier to accept your reality for what it was because once you started to try to pick it apart, everything came apart. Your entire world came apart, and you would be left with nothing.
You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, it seemed.