Written With Hearts

Written With Hearts - Chapter Six

Abby....

Six bottles of wine later, I can safely say; we are all pissed.

Not getting your tits out, kind of pissed, just giggling and telling everyone that we love them, kind of pissed. After my sixth visit to the toilet, I find myself feeling numbly fantastic. I've left the girls singing a very bad rendition of Like A Virgin.

So feeling hot, and a little lightheaded, I drunkenly make my way to the back of the room. As I exit the large double doors, the refreshing night air brushes across my flaming hot cheeks. It's dark but because of the moon and a beautiful clear and starry sky, the gardens are wondrously lit up.

I stand on cascading stone steps, looking up at the stars that can be seen in all of their twinkling glory. Even as a child, I found a starlit sky so captivating. I used to talk to the man in the moon as often as I could. Not understanding why he didn't ever talk back. The stars were my friends. They made me feel comforted when my father couldn't. Whenever I felt angry about him, the stars in the sky soothed me. It sounds stupid that stars, a million miles away from me, gave me more comfort than my father ever could, when he only lived ten miles away; doesn't it? Or shall I say; he used to only live ten miles away. He could in fact be a million miles away now. Is that how far heaven is?

You see, my father died three years ago. He had bone cancer, and I wasn't even told about his death. He had been in touch, off and on, since being diagnosed. But the more ill he got, the less I heard from him. I think my father knew he was dying. The very last time that I saw him, he gave me some old, family pictures of him and his own mother and father, then he told me how proud he was of me. At the time, I thought it was all being said just a little too late. He had twenty-two years to tell me that he was proud of me, but he didn't.

The truth was, dad had a wife and another daughter. I was just the hanger on. His wife knew all about me, but she hated me. I was the constant reminder of my dad's affair with my mum. If I didn't hate her so much, I could probably understand. But she took away the one thing from me that I can never forgive: the chance to say goodbye. Even as he was dying, she still didn't have the decency to let me into their lives. I even wrote her a heartfelt letter, asking whether I could be there to support my dad during his final months. Nothing. I heard sweet FA from her.

Unknown to me, I had been texting my father, when he was already dead. I can't even express how much that fucking hurt when I found that out. It was only after having a weird dream about my dad that I decided to call his old work colleague. He was the one who told me the shattering news that my dad had passed away, three months earlier. Three fucking months! It was the cruellest of blows. To have been repeatedly pushed out of his life was one thing, to be completely pushed out of his death was quite another. His death left a trail of devastating questions for me. Did he not love me? Was I not important enough? Was I that insignificant? So many questions, that will never be answered.

It has to be said, I was in a bad place following the news of his death. As I tried to get a handle on him being gone, I allowed something to happen. It's something so awful; I can't even bear to remember it. I can't even bear to talk about it. It's a time that fills me with great sadness, shame, and pain. All you need to know, at this point, is that I went to hell and fucking back. Throughout that black and numb period in my life, I blamed my mother. I blamed my dad. I blamed his wife. I blamed the entire fucking world. I had all this hurt inside of me and just didn't know what to do with it. So I picked up a pen and started writing.

They say as one door closes, another door opens. My dad died and something terrible happened, causing me to write my first read-worthy novel. Through my grief and shame, I wrote my little heart out. Every emotion that twisted like a knife, I poured into my characters. With hurt pumping through my veins, I produced my best work. It was my debut novel that first got me noticed on the indie stage. I'm still performing, so to speak. I still suffer stage fright, and yet I carry on because it's the only thing that makes me feel truly alive. I still get days when the dark moments that once cursed my life try to come for me, but I somehow always manage to keep them at bay. So you see, in some strange way, I owe my writing to the death of my father and my personal shame. It's totally bittersweet. Shit! I'm more pissed than I thought. I'm dragging up the painful past. Piss off painful past! Disappointed with myself, for pulling myself down with thoughts of my dad and my haunting past, I sigh an I-can't-do-this-now sigh.