What This Picture Of My Father Means

A woman messaged me the other day, and she asked how I was able to make peace with my father after his drug addiction, infidelity, and sporadic presence in my life.

And all I could think about was shortly after my 9th birthday, after dad left, and slowly all his pictures were taken down. And listen, I understand why my mother did it. He had an affair, and a drug addiction, and I can only imagine how hard it was to look at his pictures around the house.

But what I didn’t realize until I was much older was that mom took down dad’s pictures, and between the age of 9 and about 30, I really didn’t have any pictures of my dad. And slowly all I had were hard memories.