"The Session"

“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his glistening brow with his monogrammed handkerchief. “I don’t know what has gotten into me, usually this kind of thing is no problem for me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, “it happens more often than you’d think,” her thick southern drawl swirling in the air with the coffee scent that still clung to her red lips. “We could just talk if you’d like, see where that takes us, if you want you could tell me a bit about yourself.”
“Well,” he began his self-pitch, “I was born in Texas but raised in New Jersey by my dad and my step-mom until I was sixteen.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, my real mom was here and there, I guess. I never really got a chance to spend much time with her when I was younger and she was always taking me on trips when I did see her. I guess I don’t really know if they were trips or if she just didn’t really live anywhere. I never wanted to ask, even when I did spend time with her.”
“What happened at sixteen? Why did you not live with your dad and step-mom anymore?”
His smooth fingers glided around his Rolex, back and forth, turning it in circles, “He found my mom again. Before that, when I got to see my mom I was dropped off at some point with a social worker and she would come pick me up and off we would go. This time, my dad stuck around, stabbed her four times in her abdomen. I don’t know why I am telling you all this, being as it is just our first time together.” He finished his sentence brusquely as if she had dragged this information out of him without his knowledge.
“Don’t worry about it, at some point, this kind of stuff made it into my job description.” She chuckled at the idea of a normal meeting with her clients, probably not possible. “So what happened to you then?”
“Well,” he settled back in to his story, relaxing at the idea that he was not the only one who cracked life secrets around this place, “I spent a lot of time in law offices when I was with my mom and had read a lot of book on children’s rights, so I lawyered up with a guy whose law firm was a pretty regular stop when I was with my mom, and he helped me get emancipated, instead of going into the system.”
“What’d you do after you got ‘mancipated?” her painted fingernails picking carefully at her bouffant hairstyle.
“The lawyer offered me a job as a gopher and I took it. I quit school and worked full time. When I wasn’t running errands or looking up cases for him, I was studying every law book I could get my hands on.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I wanted to make sure that other families got that justice that my family never got. You know, my step-mom bailed out my dad and he only served five years for killing my mother. So I took the bar in California, no law school, and passed. Been a lawyer ever since.”
“So how’d you end up back here in Texas?”
“Wanted to be closer to my mom’s grave, she was buried here by her parents. You know, you smell like she did, same perfume and everything.” He thought carefully now about his life with his mom and why he hadn’t gotten to spend more time with her. He thought about why this session had gotten so...off topic.
“Well, sir, time’s about up unless you want to double your session, is there anything else I can do for you tonight?”
“No, not tonight, I may see you again though,” he handed her seven, crisp, one-hundred dollar bills. “You deserve the double payment even if it’s not double time tonight.” He walked out of the room swiftly, suit jacket still in hand.
“Thanks, I hope I do see you again,” she said as she thumbed her hour’s pay and checked her makeup in the cracked mirror. The peeling paint behind her finally chipped onto the floor as she shut the door of room “#G” for the night.
As she walked back to her post on the corner, she stopped to pull up her fishnets. Another girl wearing a leopard print mini dress and red high-heels came up next to her, “how’d it go tonight, girl?”
“Another easy seven hunskie; I guess there’s no psychologists in this town quite as good as a naked girl in bed for a guy with mommy issues.”
“Damn girl, you always get lucky. All I got was fifty bucks and another black eye.”
Disclaimer: This was a fictional story depicting fictional characters, not based off any real people or events and came completely from the author's imagination.

It's two a.m. and I am thinking about the same thing I think about every moment of every day. My dad. Sometimes the thoughts sit comfortably at the back of my mind, sometimes I remember the good things, sometimes I do things exactly like he would have done them and think of him. Right now, I can't seem to think of anything other than the fact that he is gone. He was and is such a huge part of me and everything I do. How can it be possible that his body no longer exists...anywhere? His smile, his never fading dark hair and tan, his mind are all just gone. And for what? What purpose was served by the way he died? I don't understand how he could have left me for the alcohol emotionally first and, eventually, physically too.

It doesn't matter if a person is five, nineteen, or forty-five, if a parent makes any conscious decision that puts something else before their kids, the person will somehow blame themselves for not being good enough. I have seen it in every part of my life. My family and closest friends that are lacking parents in one way or another blame themselves in some way. Whether the parent lacks realistic thinking, drinks all the time, or even chose another family, the children are stuck seeking that parent's approval and attention. It doesn't matter how good or bad the parent is that is around, just that the other one would be if we, the kids, were just a bit better.

Eventually we get tired of trying to impress a parent who fixates on something else which is, seemingly, more important than us. We get angry. But should we resolve that anger and go ahead with the best relationship that is possible? Or do we stay angry and hope things get better in the long run. But what if there is no long run? How, then, to we let go of the pain, anger, and ultimately, the sadness that plagues us? I don't have an answer, yet.

I do know that the most important thing parents can do is to never walk away from their kids no matter what age, stage of life, no matter what circumstance or temptation. Abandonment has so many different meanings that people don't consider and so many resulting emotions.

I wrote a part of a song shortly after my dad died, here are the lyrics so far:

I wrapped my hand around your finger, like I had you wrapped around mine
I cry for the laugh I want to hear just one more time
I am broken with out Daddy
I am broken, cause' I'm Daddy's little girl

But where does that get me? I was broken before and am broken now. My life has been a roller coaster of events and emotions, but my general position remains stagnant. So now what?

10 Questions

1. Why, when I am the only person driving towards the intersection in any direction, does the light turn red?

2. When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny?

3. Why put a round pizza in a square box?

4. Why does honey come in plastic bears instead of something like plastic bees?

5. Why are men's shoe sizes and women's shoe sizes different? AND why do little kids' shoe sizes go backwards? (ex. size 11 is much smaller than size 5)

6. Why is it okay to kill a deer, dismember it, and put the head on your wall when it is illegal to keep one alive as a pet?

7. Why can my campus post office never get the right number of package slips in my box?

8. Why does your water bill go up if there is a drip in a faucet when, really, the water is just being recycled?

9. Is snow measured when it is frozen or melted?

10. What if we all see colors differently and just don't know it? What if we all ACTUALLY have the same favorite color?

A Short Story Written for Fiction Class

"June 15 2008"

One last sip was all it took to put him under. His bunk remained as lifeless and cold as he was, now, in the refrigerator at some morgue downtown. His pillow was crumpled with a few strands of dark hair scattered on top and his sheets were shoved to the bottom of the bed. A card from his daughter lay untouched under the pillow. "Happy Father's Day Daddy, I hope you come home soon!" His Rolex watch had been placed in the bag with his clothes, glasses, wallet, and wedding ring.

The tan line on his left ring finger screamed some kind of commitment. His eyes were open, but glazed and filmy, his lips slightly parted and brow furrowed in confusion. His hair was brushed back, making him look so much younger than he really was. He looked exactly as he had the last ten years of his life. He didn't look pained like he had forty-eight hours ago, no longer shaking or hiccuping or vomiting. His body was not as pickled on the outside as the coroner's report indicated the insides were, though it did explain high levels of prolactin and proteins on his cheeks, listed right next to "Brain Weight: 3.24 Lbs."

She twisted her wedding band around her finger as she stared blankly at the wall, warm tears streaming down her nose, over her lips, and onto the head of the little girl in her lap. The phone clanged somewhere in the house, unanswered. The doorbell rang and people walked away without catching a glimpse of her, he widow. She watched as good friends walked in anyway, felt as they squeezed her, and watched them walk out again leaving her and and her daughter alone. She heard as they commented on how she was unresponsive, unaware, and glazed over. She heard the replies: What else was she supposed to be?

She finally drove, dazed, to his last home. She picked up the bag full of clothes and checked its contents for the ring and the card he must have kept. She pulled the ring out and slid it over her finger next to her own ring, still grabbing for the card. Not finding it, she turned to the bunk and smelled her husband's unmistakable scent of Jose Cuervo. She found the card as she hugged the pillow, adding prolactin and proteins to the mix of substances on the white pillowcase.

On the door, a sign read "Memories of Kane."

She meticulously wrote, "He promised to get better, no matter what the cost."