by Teresa Antoinette

Created on: May 22, 2010

This feels like a death.  Like I'm grieving for some stranger that has mysteriously left deep penetrating marks all over me. My dad is still alive for all I know, but his silence says more than any words combined.  He doesn't write back, call back, text back, love back and so it feels like he's died.  Like he's been unearthed and catapulted into someone else's orbit.  

This feels like I'm mourning for someone I never knew.  Like I opened the newspaper and read a random obituary that just struck me and stayed in my mind for no damn reason at all.  He is estranged and that feels worse than a death.  If he had died, he wouldn't have any choice but to be gone.  I wouldn't have any choice but to swim in my grief.  But he has chosen his absence and somehow that feels far worse.  His undead ghost feels far worse. 

Somehow, the hole in my heart closes over without warning, as if to protect itself from any sort of reliable, non-fictional loss.

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