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"I can't eat seafood and I don't really like it anyway." I said to my father. He and I were finally spending some quality time together since he had gotten back. My schedule had been so busy and I finally had some downtime.
"What!? You used to could fuck you up some crab legs as a little girl," He said earning a laugh from me. Don't say it like I was just greedy na'." I defended. "And that you were. I'm still surprised you didn't grow up to be big as a house." He said as his face fell. "I'm really sorry that I wasn't around for so long. I'll probably regret the decisions I made and the way that I went about them for the rest of my life. I've missed so much." He had apologized more times than I could count on hand.
We spent our time together shopping for the baby and he answered every single question that I had for him.
Him and my mother didn't break up because they fell out of love, but because of him turning to drugs, and at the time he wasn't willing to get help. The addiction had just a strong grasp on him, but his was stronger.
He fell into a depression shortly after we moved here to Florida. Though he didn't regret taking Skylar in, raising and taking care of five kids and a wife on his own was tough for him and everybody coped with depression differently. He grew up in a traditional home much like my mother. He wanted her to be able to stay at home and only worry about things around the house and the kids while he provided.
It was a lot for him to do it all on his own, but he wouldn't dare ask her for help after he had promised her father that he would take care of— and provide for her. My mother didn't find a problem in finding some little office job to help him out a little bit and be a helpmeet, but he didn't see it that way. She had enough on her plate tending to this house and their many children.
His addiction started with prescription pills and it gradually escalated from there once they were no longer doing it for him. He made the decision to get help four years ago around the last time I seen him.
He was saying his goodbyes unknowingly.
He decided that he loved his family more than the euphoric feeling that the drugs gave him and he rather die, than die mentally and have his family have to see that everyday.
With the help of my mother— he checked himself into a rehab a few hours away from home and got help with his drug addiction and his depression the proper way. He wasn't allowed to be prescribed anything for the first two years, so he had to utilize the therapy that they offered to take some of the load off of his mental. He explained how he had nothing but good intent all those times he would tell me he'd see me soon.
At the facility he was stationed at, he wasn't allowed to have any contact with the outside world— but the times that he granted, I was the person he always called. Everybody knew what was going on with him except for me. Out of all my siblings, I was the only daddies girl and they wanted him to be able to tell me himself instead of hearing it from them.
