I’ve never really lost anything of importance; I’ve lost trinkets and items that at time were weighted with a great value. It was a value that was quickly faded. And I have lost homework assignments and flash drives with projects of the utmost importance on them. I have lost respect for people, and I’ve lost opportunities. But I’ve never lost anything of real value. This makes it hard to imagine the feeling of losing something, I really haven’t. Never has anyone close to me died. And that’s not something you can fake. The one thing that I have lost, been deprived of, was my family structure, but that doesn’t count, not really. Because we were never a family. Not really. Not completely. Sure we had all of the necessary components, a mother, a father, two children- hell, we even had the white picket fence. We were the embodiment of that stereotypical American family everyone strives to be (or prays not to be) but we fell onto the wrong half of the spectrum. We were the wrong fifty percent, because fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. I suppose that means fifty are a success, everyone who quotes that statistic seems to forget that fact. Still, it’s hard to really care. Nothing has changed. My father who was already half-way to absentee when he lived in house is no longer there. We see him two hours a week, and that truthfully flat lines about where we were before. There’s no increase. No decrease. No loss.


Still, it hurts that he would throw it all away. It may not have been much to begin with, but he put himself out in the cold. Every time he missed something important, some event that mattered for a football game. Every day that he shut that bedroom door when we were in the other room eating dinner. Each and every day he widened that void between us, and he pushed us further away. He caused the explosion and then had the audacity to shy away from the fallout as if it surprised him. He’s the one who had an affair. Who after my mom had caught him once before, and made allowance, had gone back. To the same woman, who was more important than our family- his family. Forget about what his duty to my sister and I. Never mind his duties to the woman who he promised himself to, the woman who he had at one point loved enough to get down on one knee. He broke our family to pieces and he was the one able to clear out before it all went up in flames. Now we have split incomes and college is even further in the distance as it grows closer, but it’s no longer his job. A single check bi-weekly that barely covers anything is his only admission of guilt as he lives in a nice apartment. We no longer live in the house with the white picket fence. We support a different stereotype of American families now.


Maybe it’s not fair to put all the blame on him. Maybe if we’d taken the interest that he’d never taken. Sat down to watch the football games with him. Maybe we expected too much from a man who’d never been anything but what he was. So maybe if we could go back and watch that game with him, spent the time and frozen onto the bleachers next to him as we let him explain the game we had no interest in. There’s no way to know, but maybe if we’d been the daughters equal to the father he’d never been, he’d still be here. We’d still have our white picket fence and our carefully planted flowers. Maybe if we’d done it differently.


It’s hard not to feel alone. Rachel’s jaded, angry and bitter as she spits the word Mike in the direction of the man who’d once been called Dad. Mom takes it out on us even if she doesn’t mean to. The pain of having her life ripped away seeping to fuel the anger behind her words. Words that make me promise to avoid the heartbreak of marriage at all costs. As her pain forces itself onto me. As I stare out at the word blasting by and wonder why it all fell to s***. As I let myself become jaded as the rest of them. As I wonder why someone couldn’t care for once. Why we can’t want to gather at a table and discuss our days. Our world’s cold, but not from loss, from routine.


This is what it’s always been. There’s been a change, but no a loss. He’s no less involved than he was before. He may very well be more involved as he now must ask about our days. Are we doing well? What happened at school? Not that his interest has peaked, but he just lives in a more isolated state of having to care. And that’s why I can’t care anymore, because it’s too much work. The only answer is apathy and I’ve mastered it.