Rip daddy- Happy birthday

This is a paper I wrote a long while back about what happened. 

 I laugh, I smile, and I get into trouble. But no one knows that many of my laughs are empty. Many of my smiles are not happy, and the trouble I get into is not unfounded. No one knows. I don't pretend to look for sympathy. I have long since come to terms with what happened, but I will also not pretend that it didn't affect me. It took something from me, something dear, something completely and totally irreplaceable, and something to which I have never yet been able to assign a name.

When my father left, it crushed me. For the longest time, I couldn't understand why. I was at the age where everything had to do with me, just barely five years old. I'm not sure if I ever blamed myself, but I am sure that since he's been gone, everything is just a little less bright. Nothing is as clear or as perfect as it should be. My outlook on life is damaged. Like a hairline crack on a mirror, the realization of the fact that my father is no longer here will always be here, not always in the foreground, but always there, taking away from the beauty of the picture, subtracting from the power of every moment. It's not something I think about often, but it never fully goes away.

That day still resides in my thoughts, making me painfully aware it wasn't a dream. So young, so unacquainted with chaos, I had no idea what was going on around me. Had I known that would be my last chance to be with my father, surely I would have given it the respect it deserved, but I did not. That day was the birth of the rest of my life. I say a birth carefully; we did not just move on, my mother, sister, and me. We struggle to move on, to live again.

I was taking my afternoon nap, like I did everyday. My mother came in crying and shaking me, asking me to get up. My dad was lying on the couch screaming, with nothing but the white of his eyes showing. I was too young to know what was going on and too scared to care. Mom was making phone calls. What seemed like minutes later, paramedics came in, ushering us out of the house. I went back inside to get my glasses and saw as the men were sitting on him, trying to control his flailing of his limbs. I was aghast, terrified, even as they loaded him into the ambulance and shut the doors. That was the last time I saw him alive.

Years have passed now and we have settled into a new life, missing something, but making up for it. Sometimes I wonder how my mother can even look at me, a constant reminder of the love she used to know. Sometimes, anger floods over me when I think of how I never celebrate Father's Day or have any one to chase boys off, someone to fight with when my shirt is too short, or to one day walk me down the aisle.

My father not being here is definitely a plight; I cannot cheapen it by calling it anything less than this. The situation has taken so much normalcy from my life, but in other ways, it has made me stronger, better, a little more grown, and wiser. His absence has taught me one of my greatest lessons: The greatest thing about life is summed up in three words – it goes on.