Equinox 2018 | Page 38

During these times I would play on the dilapidated tire swing, having the wind as my playmate, pushing me every time a gust came through my yard. I waited there, hoping my father would bust through the door, ball in hand ready to play catch or tag; he never came though; I thought he would never come. Then one day it all changed. He woke me up before the sun had time to poke its head over the mountains in the distance. He threw me and numerous amounts of hiking gear into the backseat of our old pickup truck and we drove to the Badlands, eight hours from our house. We hiked all day in the boiling sun and camped that night shivering because of the surprise cold front that moved in. The moon was our night's sun, giving us light to set up camp and build a fire. “You know son,” my father said to me as we ate our franks and beans and drank our water around the fire, “your mother and I first met here. It all seems like yesterday to me. She was a great and beautiful woman and I don’t ever want you thinking any different.” There was slight glimmer in his deep ocean eyes. It was a glimmer that took me off guard. A side I had never seen of him before as a child, one that gave me hope for the future.

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My father and I continued to go to the Badlands for a few months until the glimmer that I saw in my father’s eyes that first night of hiking soon faded and turned back into those dull ocean blue eyes. They were a false sense of hope and safety for me. Our relationship began to distance when I reached the age of twelve and at thirteen the both of us were ready to grab at each others' throats and hold onto them until one of us turned purple and passed out. My father would show up less at the house after work and spent most of his nights drinking his paycheck away. When I was fourteen I had reached my limit and I decided I could take no more.

I turned the corner and the light emitting from the TV lit up the entire living room with its static white light. My father sat on his dirt brown leather recliner, ashtray filled to the brim to his left