“Only god knows
Only god would believe
That I was an angel
But they made me leave
But they made me leave”
-Ethel Cain, Punish

no matter how many times i hear this, it breaks me: the abject rejection of someone devout in their faith but because of who they are, they are forced out. regardless of your love, regardless of faith, a perfect of child of God (only god knows, only god would believe, that i was an angel) and how, how is this possible, the vileness of people, the hypocrisy of their beliefs (but they made me leave).

why, why reject someone who you’ve committed yourself to harming, that in turn they have been convinced they need to be punished in their perfection? the split, the cognitive dissonance, it makes me weep. i think of my son, what he faced growing up. i think of my daughter, her shyness, her kindness. and how cruel the world is, how cruel their world has been. they are angels and yet are perpetually cast out, over and over, some days better than others, but always the threat: you do not belong here.

i tell myself, what they dont understand: it’s not suicide, exactly. and the comma there is important, it’s reinforcement. Exactly. It’s not suicide i yearn for. Exactly. Not exactly suicide. not the end of the breathing, thinking, of being in the world. It’s the desire, intense desire and conviction, that they would be better off if i was gone.

io was toying around on the piano last night. this hideous looking thing that she got for nothing off facebook. she only had to pay for a moving specialist to bring it into our home. I was thinking, while she was composing something new, utterly her own, how is she going to remember that? Then I saw she was recording it for her friend JoJo and still the thought bothered me later, how does she know it’s the right keys, the piano isn’t even tuned properly? But later, just before bed, trying to sleep: but that’s why it’s wonderful. It happened once and she was the music and the music was her and something moved within her. She might never be able to reproduce it. She might even make it into something more polished, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is she was the music and she was beautiful.

Sometimes I wonder the burden I place on you. Then again I don’t know if that’s even more obnoxious, to think what I write has that kind of weight.

But writing to me means so much. It’s who I am, who I have been, who I could be. And I share these things with you, I write to you, to connect, to say, “hey, this is who I was, who I am, who I could’ve been”

Perhaps by being seen, you see yourself. Perhaps these words, these flashes, resonate. Perhaps they come from a place you recognize. Perhaps they don’t. But even if that is the case, you’ll come away with an understanding of us that you’ll hang onto when you need it most.

we cannot be redeemed, i cannot be redeemed, it’s a lost effort, it’s pointless. we are not coins, we cannot be traded. the past cannot be traded, it cannot be repurposed, a battered piece of silver leveraged for something plushy, shiny or new. it is obscene archeology. we dig up bones, we dig up dirt, pressure under the finger nails, grit between the folds, the deeper we go, the more uncomfortable we become.

we cannot be forgiven, i cannot ask for forgiveness, it’s impossible. to ask the you who you are today for sins committed by who i once was. to solicit the ghost of you, the corpse of who you once was. and what if you are truly gone? what if you are buried, or far off, in another world, a better place? who am i, suddenly awake, hat in hand, to visit your door step and rip open that wound, scarred over and faded.

we can only ask for grace, i can only seek grace. inward spiral. to turn within, to suffer in silence, to come out the other side. to measure the effort, the lack of effort, to apply extraordinary effort, to be relentless in acceptance: this is who you are. you are flawed. you are vicious. you are cruel. you are human. you are capable of more. you are capable of love. you are capable of kindness. you have yet to find out what you truly are.

dearest mikey,

this is the struggle: who you are, who you’ve been.

year after year, the consideration, the moment of reflection. have i moved? the needle, the gap, have i crossed the bridge? am i in a new place? there, the crux: have i arrived?

and you look over your shoulder and it seems all you’ve done is drag your baggage with you, cut deep grooves across old worn out floors buckling up at the seams. you yearn to leave this house and it’s as if you haven’t even reached the front door.

you think you’re still carrying a you that is lacking, that is too young, too impetuous, too quick to judge, too quick to anger. you haven’t gotten anywhere. you are still here. and it’s a rubber band snap of disappointment, a whiplash of frustration that erupts with the question: when, dammit, when?

the problem is who is doing the looking. yes, this sounds stupid, but hear me out.

i marvel at you. without even trying, you unassumingly take center stage. how hard this must be for you, for someone who feels their flaws are self evident and wretched. in your moments of weakness you must desperately want to disappear. but this is not who you are. you are a wonder and somehow between then and now, you have convinced yourself otherwise.

and you know it. deep down, you know what you are capable of and it scares you.

because i see who you are, all your flaws and shiny bits. the cracked earth and the resplendent gardens. the softness and the jagged edges. the deep compassion and flippant remark. and every year, there is more forest than cliffs. every year, there is more understanding than judgement. every year, there is more color than black. it feels slow, you want to get there. but it’s not about crossing thresholds, it’s about depth. it’s not about getting from point A to point B, it’s about standing still, it’s about letting it wash over you.

i’ve really struggled with what i want to say to you, to write to you. to say something that you haven’t heard before. so let me end with: i love you and am in love with you. this year perhaps more so than any other, we have grown even closer. and it’s not because of me, it’s because of you.

so thank you michael, thank you for being the most wonderful son i could ever have imagined.

oh, and happy birthday.

love, always
me

My love,

Years on years, layers on layers, the places change, people come and go, but the players remain.

Side quests, boss battles, backstory, scene cuts. Leveling up. It feels like we’ve been leveling up. Does that feel like that for you? That we’ve been leveling up?

I feel closer to you every day. The tension between us a gentle one, keeping us in orbit, not gristle rubbing the skin raw. Heavenly bodies with elliptical journeys that in their moments of great distance are inevitably drawn back together.

What are we orbiting? This, this thing we stumbled upon by chance, this life we’ve lived, the heat and warmth and flares that threaten us but never break the surface.

It’s hard to explain, this thing I want to say to you, that I’ve been wanting to say to you every year, every day: I cannot explain us. I still don’t understand what the trigger was on that night. What was the compulsion.

you’ve asked me, how do you know? I didn’t know then, I just knew that you were the one, I just knew I wanted to be near you, with you, live a life with you. I still don’t know, I haven’t figured it out.

and I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. I just want to keep spinning.

Always,

me

ba, look closely.

my ioanna,

It must be boring having me as a father. Every day, or at least every other day: “I’m proud of you.”

It must get tired. Or old. But I am old. Or a try to be. I’m at the very least exhausting.

But truth to tell it is exhausting to have you as a daughter. You succeed every time. Valedictorian. Jesus Christ, what do I say to that? Ok, let’s get a grip, let’s start somewhere.

you started out sitting on the couch in our home talking non-sense. This dramatic change. And there were dramatic changes, hard changes, difficult choices, but also transformation. You went in wanting to pick, and heal, people’s brains: you came out of it an artist and wanting to share the power of art as a teacher.

This was not a small feat, despite everything, your core did not change. Despite the hardship and disappointments, you still want to give and have found a viable way to give without compromising yourself.

Maybe that’s the lesson to be learned here, you sacrificed without compromise. You figured out the logistics and are factoring a way through. There is a beautiful logic there that I am… dammit, I’m going to say it again, proud of.

You see, you must be sick of it. Not my fault. It’s all on you.

You should be proud.

Love,
me