Erosion of Home

I spent most of my life chasing something I could never touch.

It was always there,
just out of reach
like light leaking through a closed door,
spilling into the hallway
as if to remind me what I was not allowed to enter.

Close enough to feel.
Never close enough to hold.

So I kept reaching anyway.

Like something starving,
scratching at iron gates until the skin gave way,
convinced warmth existed on the other side.

That was the shape of it.

That was me.

I told myself it would change one day.

That eventually,
the distance would soften.

That one day your eyes would settle on me
and stay there.

Not pass through.

Not look away.

Stay.

As if I had finally become something worth keeping.

I built myself around that possibility.

Carefully.

Like rebuilding a house from fragments after a fire,
hands still trembling,
trying to convince myself the foundation would hold this time.

Piece by piece.
Bone over bone.
Scar over scar.
Silence over silence.

I learned how to soften myself where I was too sharp.
How to disappear when I was too loud.
How to become acceptable.

But no matter how carefully I arranged myself,
something always felt misaligned.

Like a room rebuilt from memory,
almost correct,
but never quite livable.

There was always too much of me.

Too many thoughts crowding the inside like birds trapped in glass.

Too much anger, settling heavy in the ribs.

Too much longing, stretching everything thinner than it could safely hold.

You had given me a road once.

Straight.
Predictable.
Clean.

A path where nothing unexpected was supposed to happen
as long as I kept walking forward.

But it felt like surrender dressed as guidance.

So I left it.

I walked into something that did not have edges.

Into places that did not care if I survived them.

And I chose it anyway.

Every bruise.
Every wrong turn.
Every silence I swallowed instead of calling for help.

Mine.

That is where I think we started to disappear from each other.

Or maybe we never really met in the way I needed us to.

Sometimes I think distance does not begin with leaving.
It begins in rooms where no one speaks fully.
In meals that end without conversation.
In the sound of cutlery against porcelain
because it is easier than words.

I remember those nights.

Yellow light above the table.
The refrigerator humming like a tired breath.
A clock that never stopped reminding us of time passing without us.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

You on one side.

Me on the other.

A table between us that might as well have been another country.

We spoke in fragments.

Did you eat.
How was work.
You’re late.

And beneath it all,
something unspoken pressed against the walls of the room
until even silence felt crowded.

Years passed like that.

Rooms full of presence,
but never connection.

I was breaking quietly in front of you.
And you never said anything.
Or maybe you did notice,
and chose not to.

I still do not know which version hurts less.

I have done things I do not know how to carry.
Not monstrous things.
Just human ones.
Small fractures that accumulate over time
until you no longer recognize the shape of yourself.

I betrayed myself in quiet ways.

I stayed silent when I should have spoken.
I left when I should have stayed.
I held on when I should have let go.

I learned how to live with the noise inside me
by turning it into something that looked like strength.

And I know you had your own noise too.

I saw it in the way your anger arrived without warning,
filling the room before anyone could prepare for it.

In the way your silence lasted long enough to change the temperature of a house.

In the way love always felt measured,
like something rationed carefully
so it would not run out too quickly.

I carried all of that with me.
Not as memory.
As weight.
And now time feels different.
Not passing.
Pressing.
Like something leaning slowly against my chest
until even breathing feels negotiated.

The walls feel closer these days.
Not around me.
Inside me.
As if something within has started folding inward,
making less room for what remains.

I wake sometimes and feel the quiet before thought arrives.

That strange moment where everything feels suspended,
like the world is holding its breath without me.
And I wonder if this is what leaving feels like
when nothing actually moves.
Just diminishing.

We are all children of something we did not choose.

Raised in rooms too small for what we would become.
One day everything is laughter in open spaces,
bare feet on warm floors,
voices overlapping without effort.
And then one day,
without announcement,

everything becomes quieter.

Doors stay closed longer.
Names are said less often.
People begin to disappear without leaving.

Not suddenly.

Gradually.

Until you stop noticing the absence
because it has become normal.

I think that is what happened to us.

Not an event.

An erosion.

Years wearing down what could have been solid.

I wanted to tell you everything.

The nights I sat in parked cars long after arriving,
unable to bring myself to go inside.

The mornings I looked at my reflection
and felt like I was looking at someone I used to know.

The exhaustion of being alive
without ever feeling fully present inside it.

The loneliness that does not announce itself
but settles in like dust,
everywhere at once,
impossible to clean.

I wanted you to know me.

Not the version that functioned.

Not the version that survived.

Me.

The unfinished thing beneath all of it.
The parts I never learned how to explain without breaking something.
But we never built the language for that.
What we had was smaller.

Safer.
Weather.
Work.
Food.

Silence.

Always silence.

And now there are miles between us.

Not measured in roads or distance,
but in everything that was never said
and slowly became permanent.

I kept thinking there would be time.

That one day we would sit without pretending.
That words would finally come easier than silence.
That I would not have to carry everything alone anymore.
But time does not wait for understanding.

It only moves.

And sometimes that is enough to lose everything quietly.
And maybe you were proud of me.
Maybe it existed somewhere underneath everything else.

Or maybe it did not.

I do not know.

That is the part that stays.

Not the absence.

The uncertainty.

Still standing in doorways that never fully close.
Still waiting for something that no longer knows how to arrive.
I guess some versions of us never stop waiting.

I used to think I was waiting for you.

Now I am not sure I ever left that doorway at all.

And I cannot tell anymore
whether I am the one who was supposed to come in…

Or the one who was supposed to be found.

And the silence after that feels complete.

Thank you for everything, Dad.