Slowly, bit by bit, normal and happy felt less and less like an act. But as I let myself become this new person, I felt my old self, the self who had a father and then even the self who mourned my father, falling away. I felt adulthood pulling me forward, and I wondered where and how my father would fit into my life then. I wondered if he would even know me now, if I was abandoning him by letting myself enjoy a life that he wasn’t part of and wouldn’t recognize—that he might even sneer at and call bougie.
