Near 10 years ago was when I grew up faster than the “normal” kid. What began as a normal night on a Friday will be an experience I won’t forget. It was a normal day until my mom said to me and my two brothers that we will be spending a few hours at our Aunt and Uncles. I didn’t think anything of it at the time since it wasn’t completely uncommon but looking back it makes sense. When we finally came home my Grandma’s car was in the driveway which was odd since she didn’t come over much but again not unheard of since a lot of my family is within a 15-minute drive of each other.

When we got in my mom was crying on the couch and that is when the news broke. Dad had passed away. At first, there was confusion or more like denial. It didn’t make any sense has to how any of this happened and I didn’t push to ask at the time. While most everyone was crying I was just sitting there thinking about the past. Looking back I used to wonder why I didn’t cry like my mom or brothers, but now I know that I was occupying myself with thinking about my dad. The aftermath of that day had years of repercussions. It started small with having a week of school to what felt like big changes like moving from my room into the loft which we converted into a rough bedroom, that way everyone was closer to the master bedroom where my mom slept.

In the long run, this event changed my life or accelerated how I would always act. My mom offered me to send me to therapy which my older brother was in but I declined, never saw the point in it. At the time my reasoning was that since my brother was older he was closer to Dad then I was. However, I’m not sure that’s the case. After long reflections of this event, I believe the reason I didn’t cry that first night, even if I did later or go to therapy is for another reason. I now believe that in order to “protect” myself I started thinking of things in a logical sense. Not with emotion but with an outside perspective and only attempting to see the facts from there. I later learned that my dad had killed himself and that only made the problem worse. 

Even if you become emotionally attached to someone they could break the trust of emotional attachment in the worst way possible. Unintentionally. They could die in a car crash or kill themselves because of a far worse problem. Of course, that thinking is not healthy however it is hard to forget and make go away completely. It may even take a new even stronger bond to completely break the old ways and start anew.