My Childhood

I was in tenth grade and my sister and I were going to our weekly dinner with our father. Something I had always looked forward to. We sat down, my dad wanted to talk about something he said was important. I was nervous of course, but my father is not an intimidating man. He started explaining a job opportunity he had been offered. He explained that he would spend 6 months in Iraq, he would be an electrician for the army, and the benefits for him and his children would be exceptional. I remember him asking my opinion. My sister is four years younger than me, so I seemed so much older than her at the time. Now I do not know if I should regret what I told him. But I told him to go, and he did.

The day he was leaving for his journey, we went out to lunch, and then we went to the airport. My mother was there waiting for us to say our goodbyes, and then we would be off doing random Saturday errands. I did not feel sad that day, or scared. I basically felt neutral leading up to the time. He hugged me, looked me in the face, and said something I will never forget.

"Tor, Good luck exploring the infinite abyss." He said with a smile.

We said goodbye. I hopped into the car, and started crying hysterically. I was confused as to why I was upset. I was going to see my dad in three months, when he has a vacation, and then he would be back home again in six months; it was virtually nothing. Then I started thinking the last time I had been at an airport with my father was when he had left and never returned back home. This thought, has poisoned my mind, and I suppose directly resulted in my bitterness towards airports.

As months went by our relationship would change back and forth. We would talk a lot some months, and some months not at all. In April he returned for vacation. On that vacation he explained to us he was offered another job, that he would not be coming back. I was upset, but I was okay. A year and a half went by. I was then in the end of my junior year, my sister was in seventh grade. My father never moved back home. This is when I had realized that anger inside me had been building up. I had realized what my father had been doing with help from conversations with family members and specifically my mother that fear and sadness was what had driven my father to move away from his loving daughters and warm family. A life some men dream of. How am I going to explain to my sister? I thought continuously. She was too young to realize what had happened, and I knew one day I would have to tell her the real story, what had really happened.

Now I am seventeen years old, a senior in high-school and my father is still not living here. Over the past few years my sister and I have spent hours in airports and restaurants with my father saying hello and goodbye. I do not lie to myself, I have an enormous amount of bitterness and anger towards my dad. This anger is driven mostly by