I see a fair few jokey kind of posts here so just to clarify that this isn’t one of those and if you’re having a bad day and don’t want to read a strangers emotional crashout and make it worse, please scroll on

For the men, more than anyone else, when was the last time you cried? Not like getting misty-eyed, I mean full on snot-sobs. For me, barely 5 minutes ago and still got some tears going as I type. I miss the hell out of my dad. God. That was a difficult sentence. I miss him more because he left on such shitty terms and I don’t know if I even handled the day he left as well as I could have. For some context, he was addicted to hard drugs for a little over 10 years before we finally parted ways and it was the hardest thing to see him go from the funny, respectable and respectful, proud man that he was and turn into a compulsive liar who supposedly loved and wanted nothing more than his family but simply could not choose between us and the drugs. Now I don’t need an explanation of the mental hold that drugs can gain over someone. I lived it. I stared it in the face for long enough and I understand what it does to people but it just hurt so much to hear him say that and then still choose the drugs every damn time. The desperate, pathetic creature that he turned into towards the end is so hard to think about now when I compare him to who he was before. I wouldn’t have traded him for anything.

He busted his ass to provide for us and while we grew up in general poverty because he couldn’t provide very much, we never complained and were always grateful and appreciated everything. And he knew that. We all loved each other so much. Him and my mother were like the perfect married couple. There was so much love in our house no matter how shitty it was. Until he got involved in that shit. Now I know this sub is called confession and this just seems like a teary eyed dude blubbering about missing his dad but please bear with me, I’m getting there. I’m just trying to explain why it’s so hard. So for a little over a decade our powerful bonds and love just slowly disintegrated until it reached a point where the stress was so much it was visible on all of us and I was highly suicidal myself on most days and just could never see an end to the dark tunnel we were stuck in. So enough of that. Trying to fast forward to the day he left. My fairly wealthy uncle had offered me a great job in the form of a position in a company that he owns and obviously I pounced on it, who wouldn’t? So things were looking up for us and we were living in a nice house where we were able to take my dad off the streets where he had been living for a while and give him a room. He stayed with us for about six months and gave us a lot of shit, disregarding our rules and even talking shit about us to other people behind our backs. Drugs, you know? Fucks their brains up. But anyway, he had always gotten his drugs and shit his own way with whatever little nefarious things he got up to and as long as he didn’t involve us it was fine. But a couple days before the last day, he stole from us, and that was the final straw.

We threw him out again, albeit with the offer of a little weekly money for him to get by which he took, but I was so stressed out and angered by his behavior I was lashing out and I was pretty nasty at times but I couldn’t help it, it had just been so many years of it, and he slowly got more and more decrepit and miserable after he got kicked out and one day he came around for a final time. I was the only one to see him and speak to him that day and it was obvious he was done with everything and he asked me for a little money to leave the area and buy a few things and he confessed to me with dead seriousness that he was going to go to a different area so he could die in peace because people were looking for him here where we live. He didn’t beat around the bush. He was done and he was going to leave and take his own life so it could all be over. I knew my father well and I can say I definitely believed him and he was not bullshitting this time. He had made such statements before, mostly for attention but I could tell this time it was genuine and he said it would be our final goodbye. The thing that makes it so bad for me is that he made me promise not to tell my mother and brother the truth and to just tell them he was leaving to start over somewhere else. So I’m the only one who knows the truth and they still believe he’s probably out there somewhere still doing his thing. But I truly believe he’s gone. It’s just a feeling I have. I knew him. He had nowhere else to go. No one else that he knew who could help him. He didn’t have enough money to travel very far. I just feel it in my heart that he really is gone and I’m the only one who knows and I feel so hollow every time they talk about where he might be or what he might be up to because I know the truth. I know it would probably help me to just tell them but how can I? He looked me in the eyes and made that as his final request to me, so how can I betray him and his memory by divulging that to them? I know this is a long winded thing and I really appreciate you if you’ve read this to the end and I haven’t stopped crying all the way through typing so it’s taken a lot to do this and I appreciate it. I hope anyone dealing with anything remotely similar knows they’re not alone. Thanks for reading.