I just flossed my teeth, which I write because often, I don’t.

I’m lying on Jon’s bed without Jon at Jon’s parents’ house, because yesterday my dad yelled and wouldn’t let go of me until I broke the plate in my left hand over his bald, bare head. I gathered all of my things, called him crazy, and walked out of the front door while he screamed at me.

I try not to use the word crazy to describe or insult, just like I try not to use the word “retarded.” I hate the thought of someone calling me or my sister or anyone else crazy— I don’t see the point in adding insult to injury. Unless it’s directed toward my father for the fucking terror he just caused me. And the whole time that I’m crying and sweating and trying with 12 percent life left in my iPhone battery to call someone who can pick me up as I walk down the street with a suitcase, a bag, another bag, and my dog— the whole time I’m thinking about how fucked up this is and has always been, and how angry I am about how he treated my little sister for 21 years before she’d had enough, even if I can’t quite bring myself to be angry about how he still treats me. It’s hard to admit— I went back and deleted the word but I had to re-write it because there’s no other way to put it.

I’ve kept saying that I don’t feel angry, but here it is; eat it up, grief experts. I am so angry that I am still in the middle of this inter-and-intra-personal war that has ravaged my family since that first five-year-old’s memory of two parents fighting over how to cut a loaf of fucking bread. I am so angry that the main topic of conversation when I visit my dad is still my sister, because it’s (forever, now) one of those times when they aren’t speaking. (Even though, he tells me, he talks to her all the time, and I listen and think, She’s ignoring you and doesn’t give a shit.) I am so angry that I still feel like I even have to visit my dad in the first place because it’s (forever, now) one of those times when he and Emily haven’t seen each other for months. And I’m angry that a long chunk of the rest of my life might be this story of subjecting myself to the potential eruption of his bullshit because I just plain feel bad for him because he’s lost his daughter and because it’s either programmed into my genes or else I’m placebo-affected to love him.

I don’t know if what I’m writing makes any sense but I think you would understand anyway, Em. What I wish I could say is that I’m sorry that I kept trying to get you to keep giving him more chances. I’m sorry that after you connected with him when you were so, so manic I thought you could handle it, so I let you be alone with him when you were so, so depressed. It’s not my job— it was never my job— but I didn’t do it well. And although I don’t blame him, I am angry at him now.