Those We Left Behind, and Other Sacrifices

by Brandon Applegate

As a family, we struggled, always walking a treacherous trail over a precipice of anger and depression, simultaneously clinging to each other and pushing each other away.

I am tired of being a disappointment. It’s such a mistake to put all your happiness in someone else’s hands like she has in mine. I am clumsy and don’t know what to do with breakable things.

The world is monochrome. Out here, everything is big, the whole night stretches to the universe’s end like a great sigh and he’s a speck floating on the current.

There’s something frightening about a father. Children know on some primal level that Daddy might sooner eat or abandon them than stay and raise them.

"I don't know what's going on in your head, and it's okay. I'll be here when you're done," he says. "I'll always be here when you're done."

Every human being, parents most of all, are made of complexity. They are all crisscrossing interweaving thoughts, feelings, actions, regrets, triumphs, pride, and shame,