Because...
I don't have a very good answer and really, despite the question mark, it's not a question, is it?
It's just that I know it's true and thinking back, feeling back, I realize how many fucked-up aspects of myself came from him.
He never hit me, rarely raised his voice, and looking back I can see that every mocking, nasty, cruel remark he ever made was meant to make me better.
A good Christian, patriarchal papa dumping my mother and never satisfied that he was getting enough sex from any woman silly or desperate enough to sleep with him.
A man willing to ruin his child in order to save me.
I often prayed to a God I had stopped believing in, that my dad would just fuckin' die.
He finally did but it was about 60 years too late to do me any good.
Why do I confess this now, so many years after his death?
Because it's true and because I can.
