My blood levels over the past month, reading higher of diazepam than haemoglobin knocked my psychic powers out. I didn’t see this one coming. 

Within twenty-four hours I am sitting at a cafe, I know purposefully closes in one hour, across from my father. Original Daddy. I am nine and he is the man that lights up my world. The axis the sun orbits around. I study his face and affirm for myself that yes, I do look like the darker skinned version of my mother. He notices me checking my arm. He thinks I am checking my wristwatch and I have somewhere to be. I’m not. I’m fascinated that we’re the same shade of brown (leave it. It’s some internalised colonial thing). He has lost most of the straight hair that I inherited and he doesn’t smile as wide as he used to with the same small aligned teeth as mine. The two physical traits that won my mother’s heart over. Straight hair and straight teeth. It’s Darwinism babe, we’re breeding balanced progeny. Why do you think I can put my ex’s in a police lineup for the crime of breaking my heart? 6 foot, blonde, blue eyed, monsters. Daddy’s also lost the dimple he gave me. “One each” he would say when I was kid. It’s probably because he’s fat or doesn’t smile happy anymore. I asked if he recognised me and he said ‘no, you’re very skinny’. Note to self, lay off the carbs or I’ll lose that dimple too. Who said a dimple is where God’s kissed you? Probably my Grandmother. 

I soak him in like I will never see him again. Because last time I saw him he promised he would come back, and I forgot to freeze him in my memory. It’s actually a new habit I acquired after my friend died. And I kinda only ever do it when I break up with someone. The long stare goodbye. I just want your eyes burned into my memory forever babe. I like sadism and nostalgia in equal measure. 

I’m not here to recount what my Daddy said. Or how I feel. It’s too raw. Although my memory is consistently failing either through persistent pharmaceutical abuse or a willingness to forget. 

I have talked a lot of shit about forgiveness. I have read a lot of shit about forgiveness. I have practised a lot of forgiveness. Here is the answer to a question I am preempting. Or maybe it is the first question that I would ask if I saw me. “Do you forgive him?”. Yes and no. I forgive him in the sense that  I have compassion for his flawed humanity. I do not forgive his actions. I do not excuse them. I will not forget them. So if true forgiveness is forgive and forget. We’re not there yet. I don’t think it is about forgive and forget and a far more popular self help book than my humble blog readership, which I am certain is down to one, has already told me, we practice forgiveness. It’s a verb. 

Many times I have pined over boys and told myself ‘they do not deserve your love’. It’s a lesson Daddy taught me when he took his love away from me. It took me a good part of ten years to stop loving him. Love is valuable and it is a gift. Bring out a tea towel to screen print that phrase on… we need stocking stuffers for Christmas. My love is valuable and it is a gift. That i know for a true fact otherwise i wouldn’t have a 100% bounceback return of all my exes. Is that a brag or a measure of my stupidity that I love to make the same mistakes over. I didn’t get back together with all of them. Chill.

I asked the wrong question. It’s not, can I forgive him? It’s, can I love him? What the fuck. I know we’re really tired of my personal karmic lessons because we’re all atoning for some bad past life shit blah blah. We’re all in the sinking ship together babez. 

This is the lesson. Again. Or maybe it’s another segment of the lesson. Like life is an orange and not an onion. It takes so long for me to stop loving someone. Oh shit, Neruda: ‘Love is so short, forgetting so long’. That’s from the poem “Tonight I can write”. You wanna understand love. Read Neruda. Fuck. He already figured it out, wrote it better and published it. I bet his Dad loved him though.   

Daddy found God. And it brought him to me because God is going to kill him for real this time.

Daddy, the man who always lets you down by living, has dodged death twice. I told him he’s God’s favourite cause it’s a relevant millennial meme joke. And he said, ‘no no, I have full trust in the Lord’. K. me too. In new age spiritualism we call that ‘surrender’. I’m Catholic enough to know it’s really Jesus’ calling card. 

So say it’s early to mid 2000s. I’m already abandoned by him.  Daddy, rolls his 4WD on a dirt road, fractures his 7th vertebrae. Doctor tells him he has less than a year to live. His vertebrae are misaligned and the spinal fluid can’t make its way to his brain properly. Flies home to the Philippines to see his mother, has some traditional medical shamen shit done. Makes full recovery. His Australian doctor says, ‘miracle’. Daddy says, ‘you don’t believe in God, remember?’. Normal people don’t perform miracles. Only God can. That’s what he meant. I dunno, it’s a miracle that I have loved some of my loves. And I am but a human child of the universe. Me, me, me. I inherited my narcissism from my Daddy. That’s nice to know. 

Daddy, 2018, shot through the neck. Misses all major organs and his spine. Makes a full recovery. Miracle. Urgh. 

Daddy, yesterday Monday 14th December 2021. Brain cancer (unconfirmed whether we believe this). He has to get more scans done. Maybe God’s like done with Daddy’s bullshit and now I also have a new watch, cause God was kinda miracle exhausted after a big weekend so come Monday God gave me a watch that I requested via vision board at the beginning of this year, and he gave my father his wish to see me before he dies. Efficient Dear Lord and Saviour. I mean, Daddy cried over the miracle of blessed SJ’s emergence. The watch was nice, but I would have cried over a JLC, not saying I’m not grateful to Jesus. Don’t take it away. The watch. Not my father. You have to be specific when manifesting babez.

My uncle says he gave you that watch so you would have a good memory of him before he dies. Or to show you he remembered his promise. All it shows me is how many promises he broke. I’m wearing the watch. Not cause of my father, because of me. Because it shows me that no one will break me. It shows me that Daddy sure taught me how to take a hit but Mama showed me how to get the fuck back up. I am proud of myself. 

I also have clean blood. I’m paying $200 for a psychic to tell me about my past life karma today. Keep ya updated OFs! The psychic said no drugs or alcohol in the system at least twenty-four hours before the session. I told her about the valium and she said gimme five clean days. And I said fuck. Ok. 

Religion is probably contagious, I can hear my Grandma tell me this was the way the Lord planned it. You know me, I’m a ‘fate’ over ‘coincidence’ gal. 

I did this straight, And I survived it straight. Fucking hell.