The Fourth Child - Session 2

(Beep. Music fades in)

I haven’t felt great today. It’s not just the weird bronchitis situation I’m dealing with. It’s more than that even though you can probably hear it in my voice. And it’s not just you, but I can’t really exclude this task from my list of reasons to not feel great today. Don’t worry, though, it is a long list, which happens to include a lot of unreconciled questions, concerns, and the like. For years, I put off sorting through them. I didn’t want to sort through them. But now I feel like I have to. And it is an entirely self imposed feeling. These are mostly things that are irrelevant to you. At least currently. 

As an example, when my dad first died, I wondered if there would ever come a day when I didn’t think about him. I don’t know what to make of that thought, but the fact that you haven’t asked yourself that question is a bit disconcerting to me in a way that I cannot fully articulate. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Is it because you think you know what the answer would be? Is that why you haven’t asked? Or are you afraid of what the answer would be?

For me, there were plenty of questions I was afraid to answer. Sure, there might have been something inevitable about them, which is what made them so scary to me, but I couldn’t face them on my own. I would have rather run away. And I tried that. As ill-advised as that is. 

I feel the same way about making this recording for you. No offense, but I felt this returning urge to run. Maybe I’m old enough now to know that running won’t solve anything or it will do quite the opposite, but I can’t help it. If I run, there’s a slim chance things might work out for me. It’s hardly there, but all the same, I feel like it’s worth taking, simply because of how I personally value what that alternative is, what being successful would mean. It would mean not knowing the answer to a question we don’t like. It would mean doubt. Uncertainty. And that should be scary but it isn’t.

There is something comforting about uncertainty to some of us. It’s an escape to a more acceptable and pleasant reality. Not knowing which way the cards will ultimately fall means being able to authentically live in the possible universe where they fell in your favor, but at the same time, you aren’t so far removed from the present that you have to wonder if there is something maladaptive to your daydreaming. The form of make believe I’m talking about isn’t even really pretending. Because you never proved the truth one way or another, nothing is there to contradict you. You are the writer of your own fate. And it’s authentic because you believe it to be. You need it to be. Because in the preceding moments, your reality had been completely torn out of your hands. Or most of it had. You still have scraps of it. Valuable scraps. 

Maybe they aren’t valuable, though I’ll admit that, but they feel valuable because it’s all you have left.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Sometimes, I think of my dad so often that I can hardly sleep. My restless nights are not always about the dreams. Just usually. Sometimes it’s about the way my mind races through tracks that it learned when he first died, when I was a child and couldn’t understand this new reality, when I couldn’t fathom what it meant to wake up in a world that no longer had him, a world that moved so quickly without him, that sometimes I wondered if he was even real. Or if any of my memories were. That seems dramatic. The world just moved on too quickly for my taste, even if that was what it was supposed to do.

But what was I supposed to do, you know? How was I supposed to cope? What was being expected of me and were those expectations even valid? These are the questions you want me to answer, but I find that they’re complicated and interwoven with so much of the baggage in my mind and so many of my insecurities. 

I worry I talk about him too much. But that’s on one hand. The other thinks there’s something inevitable about this. And yes, this podcast is an example. I think he has something to do with my dreams, be it as source or moderator. And given what I’m trying to do, I have to explain myself. It’s part of the gig, a gig that is used as a cover by a not zero number of scam artists, a gig that–under the best and most honest circumstances–still cuts people to their core. I know there is anger at me, sadness in general, confusion and suspicion all around. My dad, to a great extent, is the only light I can offer, the only shred of evidence to my claims. 

And he’s also… Or his death is also the only justification I have for this lingering sadness. I mean, sure, there’s more. There’s the not great relationship with my mother and step-family. But when you bring them up, there are always follow up questions, because no one can understand how a relationship with a mother and her only daughter can go as sideways as ours did. But when you say your dad is dead, there’s only the occasional ‘how,’ and it’s only because you’re so young that he couldn’t have been that old. And while that’s an invasive question, it’s a bit more manageable. 

For me, though, it’s more than that. I can’t help but bring him up in casual conversations, be it about holidays, vacations, candy, dinner plans, and so much more. Once upon a time, I was worried I would stop thinking about him, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, maybe I should take a break from thinking about him. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about him as I do. 

But it was just this need to explain myself. It’s always been that. But that isn’t an answer, is it? 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I shouldn’t feel the need to explain myself. I should just be able to live. And up until I met you I thought that’s what I was doing, to a great extent I still think that’s what I’m doing, I am living with this reality, not running from it. I can’t run from it. No matter what I do he’s still gone. 

But of course, I’ve been accused of playing the dead parent card for sympathy. When I got into college, another student told it must have been because of a ‘dead parent’ quota, and yeah, I mentioned it in one of my supplemental essays. But I brushed that accusation off because, really, who would want to live in this reality if there was an alternative? Then again, maybe that’s not a fair question. Maybe it would just devolve into some childish bickering. Because I get it, 8 billion people on the planet, so never play the odds of absolutes. But we’re not talking about all of them. We’re talking about us. About the challenges of living with this reality. A balance that neither of us are so sure we can strike. 

And if this is rude, I apologize, but you have some sort of baseline you can go off of. You had him through most of your life, and up until recently, up until he died, you talked to him every day, sometimes multiple times a day. You have the gaps where you know he’s supposed to fall into. What do I have but an obligation? Or many obligations depending on how you want to package them. So this won’t change you. It just shifts some details around.

You’re going to be fine. I promise. Just don’t ask a follow up question. For my sake. Please.

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?