"you're on your own, kid."

you figure these words would come from some unlikely father-figure in some movie, some drunk who knows the mistakes that he has made have hurt you more than all the good he's done. you wouldn't expect them to come from your own father on the way back home from your shrink. you wouldn't expect them to be filled with apathy and anger and bitterness because of the night before.

but they are. that's where they're from. it's over, now, i hope, but just because we aren't fighting anymore doesn't change what was said and what was done about it. it doesn't change what wasn't said and it doesn't change what wasn't done. 

it doesn't change the fact that in the driver's seat of my father's car, the place i gave my father all my trust, was the exact same place he broke it. almost exactly twenty-four hours later, on almost the exact same way home, he just broke it. 

and then on my roof he tried to fix it. i guess i sort of fanned the dying flames. "the tiny little flickers that were frail." 

i just got so tired of holding things back from him. i got so used to receiving words from him that i finally just couldn't take any more of it and exploded with things i never had the courage to say. i don't really regret any of them now. maybe i will later, but i don't right now. i just feel so betrayed and hurt, still, that i just don't. 

you just figure because you're his daughter, that means something. that it's sort of important. but when you ask him about it, you get: "i guess that's important, too."

i guess.