The Packers just defeated the Bears and made the playoffs. The birthday letter to my father last year was about football and chasms, and 16 weeks, and trying to stand on the same piece of a plane for a few moments. And the Packers made the playoffs and the rift between us is larger than it's been in a very long time.
I feel like a failure.
I can't call him and talk to him because something would be my fault and we couldn't go back from there. So, a lot of things are my fault. Things I can't really talk about. Things that come with stamps of failure on them. Lies he doesn't even know about. I don't know when this got so hard. I struggled with the letter this past year, it took me a few days to figure out what I wanted to start saying, and a few more to figure out how to say it, and even then, I restarted the letter about a dozen times before just rolling with it. And then it was football season, and election season, and angry phone calls and passive-aggressive emails and the chasm growing wider and wider. and and and. I wish I could say 'and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow' but all I have are the ands and no idea what anything about tomorrow will be.
Except a wider and deeper distance between me and my father.
