I Don't Hate Him...but I'm Still Writing This...

Draft chapter from my upcoming novel/autofiction

I should hate him.

I know that.

If you listed everything that happened, the silence, the indifference, the way he stood by while she erased us, any sane person would say hate is the appropriate response.

But I don’t.

I don’t hate him.

And God, sometimes I wish I did.

Hate would be easier.

Cleaner.

Sharper.

Hate would mean I could finally stop crying when I think about all the times he could have opened his mouth and didn’t.

All the times I waited to be chosen and wasn’t.

All the times he pretended not to see.

I don’t hate him.

That is the part that breaks me.

Because it means some sliver of me still loves him.

The part that remembers the good pieces.

The whistling.

The stairs he carved into the hill.

The man who once loved my mother so much he carved ELILYA into cement.

Elle. I love you always.

Sometimes I think about how young he was.

Twenty-four when he married her.

Thirty-two when he lost her.

The woman who sang her whole heart at him, who looked into his blue eyes like every song had been written for him, was gone in one night.

If I am still gutted decades later, what must it have done to him?

Standing in the snow with two daughters clinging to him and the ghost of the only woman who ever sang him into being.

No wonder he remarried.

No wonder he grabbed June’s steadiness like a life raft.

That doesn’t erase what he did wrong.

It doesn’t erase what it felt like to be his daughter.

But it makes me ache for him too.

And that ache is the problem.

It is why I can’t light him up the way I can light up the others.

Trish.

Artie.

Dawn.

Dot.

June.

They earned the fire.

He just faded.

I only know this book is not revenge.

Not against him.

It is what happens when silence finally loses its grip.

I don’t hate him.

But I am still writing this.

Because someone has to tell the story.

And I am done protecting the silence.

I keep most of my writing free because I want people to be able to read it.

But if anything here has meant something to you, made you laugh, made you feel less alone, or made you think, paid subscriptions are open as a way to support the work.

No pressure, truly. I’m grateful you’re here either way.