Dad,

I wrote this some time ago, and came across it today. Ironic how timely these things that life brings before you. It is always good to take a moment to remember where you are coming from and appreciate where you are now.

I am leaving you. I am leaving you at the bottom of the sea where you belong. I will always carry you in my heart, but I refuse to let your presence burden my shoulders any longer. I love you, and as much as I try to tell myself otherwise, there is no getting around it. You are my father and that is all that it takes, I just wish that being your only son would have been enough for you. Do you know that I came here with the faint notion of never leaving, of burying myself next to you deep within the darkness of the all encompassing ocean, forever together at last? I imagined it, played it in my head over and over again.

Stark naked, standing still above the stormy sea, my inked skin quivering as lumps of cold flesh pushed outward, the wind whispering faint fears against foreboding ears. The time had come to make the jump. To plunge into the surface unknown, a depth only longed for, never reached. This would be the pinnacle of my pain, the end to my heartbreak. Peace would now carry my soul down to that which I desired most, my father. The wind blowing across my face, speaking to me, telling me it would all be ok. Then I jump, splashing into the water beneath. Immediately calm overcomes my senses. Peace radiates through my soul and I sink down to you. No struggle, no fear, just peace. 

The ultimate sacrifice. I would have done that for you, but then I actually stepped foot onto the place where you once lived, where you once breathed, the place that you left me for. I thought about the family that you sacrificed to follow your own selfish dreams, the deepest desires of your heart that teased you, the movie in your mind that made your life unbearable until you pressed play. In that instant, everything changed once again. 

I stood for something once. I used to be passionate to a fault, my convictions blinding me to the beliefs of others. Enabled by a love of life and an untainted belief in those around me. I miss that person, I long to be that person. You changed everything. You ripped the veil from my eyes in one unforgettable instant. A phone call that changed my life forever. I've lived like this for too long. Always thinking one way, then acting the opposite. I want to be a person that I can believe in again, and in order to do that, I have to stop believing in you. I'm burying you today. I'm putting you back at the bottom of the sea where you belong, never to haunt my dreams again, never to have your shadow second guess my every move, shouting doubts and disappointments as it follows loyally behind. I have learned from your death yes, but the suffering far outweighed any benefit long ago. I came on this journey in the hopes that I could be at peace with your tragedy, but now I realize that cannot happen. That in order to live my own life I have to leave you here, run away before you can find me again. It is only fair really, you left me once, now I am leaving you forever. I wonder what you thought of in those final moments of breath, and the few minutes without them. Was it me? Was it your wife, you sisters, your family? I'll never know, but then again I'll never really know anything about you. The father I remember made me feel inadequate, nothing I did was ever enough, or maybe it was that the things that I did do were always too much. My unrelenting fear inconvenienced you, my physical weakness was an obvious shame. I was ten, could you really have expected any better? Maybe it would be different if you could see the man I am today, risen from your ashes. I have learned from you that is undoubtable. I will never leave my family, I have dreams and I will achieve them, but never by sacrificing those that I love the most, leaving them by the wayside hoping, longing for contact. I'm told that you loved me, that you hung pictures of me around the places that you called a bed, but I never knew this. You never made me feel the love that others profess. I cannot, I will not, search for love that can never be found any longer. Despite everything, despite the anger and the grief, the hole in my soul that you left in your absence, I love you, and I always will, but I can't live with you any longer. The thought of you suffocates me, it turns everything I once thought to be beautiful into dark, ugly images of a half-life. I am leaving you here. I am no longer yours to keep. This is goodbye, may the ocean keep you beneath it's depths forevermore.

In one instant it became suddenly clear, the images that once gave me peace were just a child's dream, a son's longing for his father. To commit to such a thing would be a tragedy, not because of death or loss, but because it would have meant that through all the suffering, all the pain, that I learned nothing from your death. That I would have hurt those that I love the most, just like you, to indulge in some fantasy, the longing desire of a little boy left by his father. That would have been the greatest tragedy of all, but I have learned, and I am better for it. Now I know that I must bury you here, lay you to rest where you belong. You will haunt me no longer, your shadow will cease to exist. It breaks my heart, but I am my own man now and I am stronger than you could ever have been. I would travel to the ends of this earth for my family, to hell and back, and back again, and if that means leaving you forever, than so be it. 

This is goodbye, forever.