"When all that's left to do is reflect on what's been done. This is where sadness breathes, the sadness of everyone."
The book comes out Tuesday, but here is what I will be upfront about.... The pipe people, the dead blonde boy that haunted my family, teenage pregnancy, the seances, the Kurt Cobain cakes, a family literally on the verge of a total inevitable collapse.....
My son was barely one when he was sitting in his high chair in our bathroom while I was showering. I heard a whimper that turned into a hysterical kind of cry. When I came out of the shower I saw Dylan staring off with fear in his eyes. I have never seen a face like that since. At the time I was just beginning my own private battle with my father's death and the lack of resolution from it. As time went on my son would tell me things about him that only my father would know. I don't talk about my dad. My son has no grandpa. He has a yaya and a papa (my wife's parents) and a pamma (my mother, pamela) but there is no grandpa. However, after another nightmare last summer he confided in my wife that he was visited by dada's dada and pointed to a framed picture of my father sitting in his room from our wedding (we reserved two spots for my wife's mother who passed and him). I never told him the people in those pictures were. From the first experience I imagined a horrible story of my father coming back to finish what he started with me. When my son finally acknowledged who the man was...
As hyperbolic and stupid as its going to sound...if I write a book where I finally confront him, then maybe I can stop him from haunting me and my son. I spent so many nights (initially) cradling dylan in my arms while I wrote it. Then there were the nights he was asleep in our bed while my wife worked and I'd be next to him on the laptop (the whole first two pages were written this way) trying to figure out a way to stop my past and my father from ruining my son's life. It felt in a lot of ways that Dylan had found me as a nihilistic recluse and handed me the weapon I never believed I deserved to hold. I have told people this book is not about the anger...its about being tired, desperate, and feeling like you've failed only to find that a young person finds you and in an effort of their own desperation hands you the thing that defines you and asks if you'll be brave enough to try one more time. This was literally the if I ever write another manuscript that's it. Then Dylan showed up and handed me my light saber back and without saying anything asked if I could be the person I always imagined myself being.
On Monday? I'm not publishing a book. I am finally letting go. I can't thank Nick and Atmosphere Press enough for giving me a proper way to finally let go of all the anger, the resentment, the sadness, the fucking nihilism of growing up the way I did with the man I did. I am going to publicly acknowledge so people can hold me to it...Monday is going to be a spectacular and amazing day. Not because I wrote a book...but because I have no choice anymore. I have to let go of the past. Forever.
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September 2021
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