I got to thinking about my dad yesterday. I try not to think about him, because it still hurts a lot that he's gone. And I don't know how to phrase it other than a disturbing figurative image, but I am gutting myself here for the whole world to see. Hell of a freak-show circus trick if I can manage it. If you can't take it, don't read it. You have been warned.

It was a song that triggered it. The same song always does. And sadly, it's not the kind of song you want to make you think about someone you loved. See, the song was about suicide. Now, my dad didn't kill himself, but he did try a couple of times. I won't share how he tried, but I will say that everyone in the family knew what was going on, and nobody tried to stop him. Myself included.

I could say that I don't know why we didn't try to stop him, but it would be a lie. I didn't try because to my screwed up way of thinking, I would disappoint him. I'd disappoint my whole family. So even though I knew what was going on, I didn't pick up the phone.

Just a few years earlier, they found out from a camp counselor that I had thought about suicide. I'm still not quite over that episode. What I told them was that I had thought about it and decided it was a bad idea, but that I thought about running away. Well, they didn't pass that part along. Instead they told my youth pastor, who told the cook (and everyone else I imagine), who was best friends with my mom. She took my mom to lunch when we got back, and my mom came home, talked with me about it, and then told my dad. And then we talk the rest of the night and spend the rest of our lives on eggshells. It was a non-lecture, which is decidedly worse than any lecture.

A couple of years later, my sister took a big handful of pills. My parents knew, and they went to work anyway. A couple of years ago, she tried it again. After a brief hospital stay, she was declared all better.

So when I say that I was afraid I would disappoint him by calling the police, it's one of those deep, dark family secrets that screw you over until the day you die. He kept my ugly thoughts secret. It was my turn to pay him back. Obviously, it's the kind of thing that doesn't make sense to an outsider.

There's not enough fucking Zoloft in the world for my family. Not that it works for me anyway. I've tried it. And pretty much everything else on the market. The real kicker is that I have a pretty serious allergic reaction to it. And because I've decided that I AM VERY FOND OF BREATHING, thank you very much, I don't take it.

My father has been dead almost 6 years now, and I haven't visited his grave once. I can't. Suicide by pills or gassing, or suicide by a massive heart attack from the baseball size chunk of cholesterol trying to cram its way through your body- the end result is the same. How can I call it a suicide if it was a heart attack? How badly do you fight to live when you've been trying for so long not to? How far back in your desk do you cram the heart pills that your doctor gave you? He knew the date of his death before it happened. He knew that I was going out of town with my sister, and it would be easier that way. Easier for him.

This is the shit that keeps me up at night. It's also what keeps me living. Some of you know I define myself as a "punk". This is why. I take Thoreau's advice. “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.� I am pissed off that we only get 70 some odd years on this planet. I am pissed that I will not see and do everything. So painful or not, my journey is to take apart this planet, dissect it, study it, put it back together again, and tell God exactly what I think of it.

Living in your head
Without anything to numb you
Living on the edge
Without anything to numb you
It had to end to begin...
It has begun. -Sia

Did I disappoint you?
Did I let you down?
Did I stand on the shore
And watch you as you drowned?
Can you forgive me?
I never knew
The pain you carried
Deep inside of you.
I can't forget
Having to see
The words that knocked the wind
Right out of me
It's not enough
I've come undone
Trying to find sense
Where there is none
Just give me peace
You owe me that
To help ward off the fears
I must combat -Assemblage 23