Shakes me to the core.

If nothing else today, I have this pen and this paper. If I can’t find a pair of ears to endure the woes of my heart, I’ll still have this one way of letting them leak out before they become parasites and eat away at my composure. If all else fails, I can pretend that somewhere in heaven, the angel I’m thinking of is reading the words from this very page, and will somehow send down a little peace, a little help for the situations that the ones he left behind have stumbled into.

As odd as I may sound, I believe that I somehow knew that something wasn’t right. Sometimes I only felt like we were only halfway together; we were only physically present, but somehow there was a certain spirit missing. I felt the hole so strongly at times that I found myself counting the people in the house to ensure that all thirteen of us were in fact present. As I became older, I convinced myself that the growing sense of emptiness I felt was only the result of my maturing mind; I was simply learning to live in the reality of life instead of the dreamlike memories I had of my childhood. I told myself that things had only changed because we all became increasingly occupied with other things, but that maybe someday we’d all settle back into closeness again. Little did I know that my sense of emptiness was almost an intuition, and six years later, I would find the root of it, and it would shake everything I ever knew and thought about those I’m closest to.

I never actually met the head of that side of my family; he was taken home when I was still waiting to make my entrance into the world. I would like to believe that my soul and his were united in heaven before I had to leave and after he had entered. Now, I wish he was back here, because I have some sort of a hope that he could be the glue in this situation. Maybe I have a fantasized view of him because I never actually knew him, but I would like to believe that if he was still alive, my family wouldn’t be how it is right now. Maybe we wouldn’t be losing everything he worked for because of one bad decision that grew into an ugly monster of a lie. Maybe if he were still alive, the bad decision never would have been made in the first place.

Everything is about to change. Everything about our family is being jerked out from under us like a fuzzy rug, and now we’re left lying on the dirty floor of the dark truth. Trust has been betrayed, and I honestly don’t know if it will ever be restored to where it was, if at all. Will we fall apart? Will the love and support dwindle until it’s gone? Should I forget the way we used to be and accept that we will never be that way again? Should I be the one who tries to hold us together? The risk of us falling to pieces is big enough to scare me. What do I do? What happens now?

There are so many unanswered questions, so many uncertainties, and for once I’m glad that I don’t have someone to listen to all of this. I’m thankful for this pen and this paper, and that they’re here to let me release the thoughts in my head without bringing them into the harsh light of day.