TRIGGER WARNING

She could feel the judgment as people passed her outside her apartment building. Hair disheveled, loose short shorts, breasts swinging in a shirt, and belly peaking out. “I thought it was finally safe. I thought the time had come. We had waited so long because we understood why Mom always kept us apart.” She thought to herself as she felt the anger coming off her father, who passed her like garbage on the side of the street.

It was a great weekend. She hadn’t experienced such familial love as at her first time in Woodstock. Her friend invited her to a tradition she thought only existed on television. Close to a camping experience; she ate a sno-cone for the first time, bathed in a river, watched boys and men do stereotypical manly things.

She was always awkward and selfish, yet til this day they seemed to love her. She came home to have a heart-to-heart with her dad, a conversation she only dreamed of. He was always her favorite parent, partially because he wasn’t there, and it was something to aspire to. Her mother was the anxious type, doing everything in her power to keep her little one safe.

The two of them, daughter and father, sat on the couch. Her father opened up about being in love with a man and showing him off to the family. She loved that he was finally unafraid to be open. To her, to the family, to himself. She opened up about the first girl, actually the first person, to admit to liking her. Usually, she was only the butt of a joke. How she wasn’t even sure of her sexuality, because nothing was truly sexy. Only aesthetically pleasing.

This conversation was only reserved for the letters they used to write each other. Usually, it was him in recovery, writing the letters of apology. This is why, when her mom died, she still didn’t live with him. She waited until college, after freshman year. The first time that they had ever lived together, the first time he would actually get to see her. First time she spent longer than a few hours during the summer on a Sabbath with him. It all came to this beautiful conversation on the couch, where they talked til the sun came up.

Her goal was to finally clean her room. A task that has plagued her whole life. She started the task, creating piles in her room and outside of it. Till she finally got too tired and took a short nap. A nap that only lasted forty-five minutes. She awoke to her father in her doorframe, a completely different person. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Where is he? I saw you two through the window, fucking.” She looked around at the chaos of the room. You couldn’t hide a grown man here. There were only two other grown men besides her father who could be here. One was gay, and the other she had been calling uncle; neither was here.

“What are you talking about, daddy?”

“I saw the two of you through the window. I saw you two fucking. Why are you trying to lie? You must think I’m stupid.”

“We just talked all night about how I’ve never been with anyone. Why would I choose now, when I was just sleeping, to sleep with Uncle?”

“I saw it. Get your shit and get the fuck out of my house. In fact, just get out of my sight.”

All she did was get a MetroCard and her cell phone, running down the stairs to the front of the apartment building. Lucky for her, there was someone to run to who wasn’t too far away. She had work later that day. First thing she would do was sleep; she only had four hours before she needed to go to work.

The person she ran to drove back to the house. She went in to get the only money she had to her name and a little bit of clothes. She’d hope her father was still out. After packing a little bag, getting her books, her laptop, and her money. She felt it. Anger hot at her back, he appeared out of nowhere. Silent, seething.

“Why are you back in my house?”

“I needed to get money and some clothes.”

The house was trashed. He had cut up the couches with a knife. Taken the paintings off the wall and ruined them. Upset that she was back in his house and still trying to lie. He picked up the nearest thing and launched it at her. If you asked him today, he swears up and down it wasn’t at her head. She’ll tell you that it was a twenty-five-pound metal dumbbell flying past her ear into the wall behind her. Bawling her eyes out, she makes sure she has all her money, as much as she can physically carry, and starts her ten-hour shift.

Her phone ran off the hook while at work. When she had a chance, she called one of the many people who were calling. They informed her that he dad had been taken to the hospital. That the police were called, and tried to ask her what was going on. She just said how the two of them had a heart-to-heart, then she woke up with him upset.

“Your father had a three-day binge while you were upsate. They called the cops when he started threatening to kill himself and threw the couch out on the fire escape. You need to bring your father some clothes and things to the hospital.”

She doesn’t even know how she got there after her shift. She said goodbye to her coworkers and exited the building. She came to in the hospital lobby, terrified. There were people in beds in the hallway. She prayed she could get to a nurse to ask questions before accidentally running up on her father. She got a nurse’s attention and asked for her father by name. The nurse’s eyes go wide with knowing. Her dad’s hallucinations were the talk of the hospital floor.

“It isn’t safe for you to see him at the moment. He is still very upset but subdued. You can leave me his stuff.”

They let her peek around the corner to see her father strapped down to a hospital bed, rapid eye movement fluttering his eyelids.

She couldn’t believe that just twenty-four hours ago, she felt like she was in Paradise. She returned to her savior’s home, not even sure how she got there. Now she would need to hurry and find herself an apartment, preferably before junior year started. If only she could go back to Woodstock.