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sábado, 7 de octubre de 2017

Today

I'm used to being alone at home. When I was a kid, my mother and dad would work all day and I would watch TV most of the time or play I guess; I've forgotten about what I used to do besides watching TV and drawing, I don't remember much of my childhood until the moment when things got pretty bad. My dad is still very ill but now I know he's not dying soon, at least not because of this (because we never really know). He's been in his room most of the day and I've been in mine as I've done it for years. I remember asking for table games for Christmas as a kid so my parents would sit and play with me, but it never happened that way; even when I actually got those games, I'd try to play by myself (Twister is impossible) or wait until I was with a friend, because they couldn't make some time to play with me. So now that I'm 23, it's very weird for me having this man at home. I care about him a lot, and of course I love him, he's been a great dad but he doesn't say anything like "hey wanna watch a movie?" or "there's this show on the TV..." or "let's have a little talk, come here". When I get home from work, I sit with him on his bed to ask how he's doing and see if there's anything he needs, but I don't know how to act around him. When I was a teenager, I tried to change things by suggesting we should watch a movie or go somewhere but it didn't work. Instead, I became used to being by myself and letting him do whatever he wants. I suppose he does the same with me.

It's funny that after all this time I've been through many kinds of loneliness and it still hurts sometimes (I enjoy it too though). I'm sitting in the kitchen, poking at the boiled fish my aunt brought us, while thinking about how lonely it is not having siblings, but in a way I had never done before. If I don't let my friends know that my dad is very ill and I'm scared to death of him dying or being unable to live his life the way he's used to, they won't know because they aren't here in this house. When I mention what's going on, people have no idea what it feels like, because they have siblings or another parent alive, or they are very close to other family members. This bald man who makes bad jokes and lifts weights every single night is ALL I HAVE. The friends I've picked as brothers or sisters will never be the same, no matter how much I love them. They can get an idea of how I feel, but knowing that the rest of the world can't understand it 100% (unless they're going through the same thing) is very frustrating at this moment. Today I feel isolated, in a completely different dimension. Today I'm invisible.