My Dad And I Are Estranged. Here Is Our Last Email Exchange From Two Years Ago.

I'm dropping an A-bomb here but, like Truman, I hope one will be enough to end the war. If it isn't, it isn't, and the bombings will continue.

You’ve possibly already seen this in the papers, but I don’t talk to my dad anymore. It’s easy to write that like it’s nothing, but it’s been sitting in my head like a monster for years. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, it ended up in USA Today. It’s fine that they wrote about it. I just wish I’d seen it before I deleted the thread, because now I look like an idiot.

I deleted it because the responses made me uncomfortable—90% of them were this patronizing, syrupy sympathy I don’t feel I deserve, and the other 10% were from the Krippendorf Hive or some shit being like “I love your father and spit his name out of your mouth.” But once I saw it in the newspaper, I realized I’d made myself look ashamed by deleting it. I’m not. I deleted it out of self-loathing, not embarrassment.

Last night, someone asked me why I don’t deserve sympathy, and I said, “Because I’m not blameless.” I was referring to the last time my sister or I saw my dad, when I did something “cancel-able” that he held over my head for the first year of our estrangement.

The simplest way to own this is to show you the last email exchange I had with him—the last one he actually responded to. I’ve sent plenty since, but he hasn’t replied. It’s long and pathetic, and he comes off worse than I do, but I’m not exactly covered in glory either. You can read it yourself.

Two final throat-clearing notes:

1. Some of this won’t make sense because I didn’t edit it. Such is my commitment to honesty.

2. I love my father. I have always loved him. I think he’s better than this email. But it’s been two years, and this appears to be the last email I’m ever going to get from him, so fuck it.

C’est la vie.