Page 56 of A Love Letter to Whiskey
Then, I paddled out a bit, sat up, and straddled my board once more, my eyes on the sun that was still struggling to wake up with me.
It’d been exactly three years since my father’s death.
How drastically my life had changed since that day.
I still remembered every aching moment that lined the path of healing I’d been walking since then. I remembered the break on that beach with Jamie, the numbness after the funeral, the denial and desperation that followed me around for nearly a year before I finally started accepting and adjusting. Writing and surfing — they were my only release.
At first, I’d driven myself mad searching online for answers about my father’s death. I’d researched everything there was to know about electric shock drowning, as if that would help, as if that would bring him back or make it any less difficult to hear those who knew him best say how tragic it was to lose him in a freak accident. I hated when they said that. I hated that stupid phrase and the fact that there was no comfort or clarity to be found within it. It was just a callous way to make sense of something that never truly would.
Next, my mother convinced me to try therapy. She’d finally gone, after all those years of shouldering what my father did to her. It seemed like his death had killed her and freed her in equal measure, and her therapist helped her address those feelings. Still, after just two sessions, I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to talk.
And so, I wrote.
Eventually, slowly, writing started to really help — especially once I declared English: Creative Writing my major at Palm South University. Once writing assignments started to come and I was tasked with reading other works of fiction that made my emotions feel more in reach, everything started clicking together, and I started to feel okay.
Mom helped, too — along with her boyfriend, Wayne. They’d met at the beach one morning when she came to watch me surf, and he’d been nothing but a positive light in both our lives. It was the first time in my entire life that I’d seen my mom in love, and I wondered if it took my father’s death for her to be able to love at all. Up until that point, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that Mom had spent nineteen years of her life in close proximity to a man who had violated her in the most personal way — all for me. She tried to keep us a family unit, to ensure I grew up with both parents in my life. Now, she was finally focusing on herself, and seeing that made me feel like it was okay to focus on myself, too.
I’d dated, just like she had — and by dated, I mean I let two different boys take me out to dinner and then take me back to their beds. Neither had filled the gap left by the last man who’d touched me, but they’d been a nice distraction, at least.
Ethan called me sometimes, too. I only answered his call once, the first time he called after I’d explained why I left — after I told him the truth about Jamie and me. He called less than a week later, drunk as a twenty-one year old in Vegas, his words slurring together as he cursed me for breaking his heart. I cried with him, ashamed of what I did to him and still in pain over my father. After that, I stopped answering his calls, too.
Three years.
I still remembered that day, the feel of it, the pain. It was as if I was a ball of yarn, and that was the day I’d become completely unraveled, my string frayed and worn. Over the past three years, I’d slowly pulled myself together, forming the same ball of yarn I’d been before yet one that was wound differently. I was almost okay again.
Almost.
In just two months, I’d be graduating college and heading to Pittsburgh, ready to start the next chapter in my life. I rode in one final wave with that thought reverberating through me. When my feet hit the sand again, my board tucked tight under my arm, I had an overwhelming urge to face one last challenge before graduation.
I dropped my board into the sand next to my beach towel and rifled through my bag, searching out my cell phone. It was hot in my hands, the sun warming it even through the cool February chill. I thumbed through my missed calls log and hovered over his name, finger shaking at the thought of dropping just a centimeter more to dial his number. Was I really ready to talk to him? What would I say? What could I offer?
