Guilt Trip

Every father and son has or wants to go on a father-son trip somewhere at least once.
Whether it's fishing, camping, hunting, what have you.
You all feel the urge.
Or at least mass media marketing makes it seem that way.

In any case,
my father and his son are out on such a trip right now.
One that was to be wrought with adventure, ripe with freshly caught fish dinners, and a calming atmosphere within which the two could bond.

What's happening instead is me, getting texts from my brother wanting to come home three days into the week long jaunt, my dad catching a cold, the atmosphere turning sour with competitive and rude neighbors day after day, and no fish to be found.

I'm working 40 hours a week at school to try and give back to my family a bit, and be able to soften my financial burden on them. I see, or rather saw this as me working hard and making them proud.

Instead, I get needled bit by bit by each member of the family whether they are aware of it or not, concerning my never being home.

Sometimes I feel like they forget that I want to be home with them.

My dad checked in the first day of their trip to say that they made it safely and were getting settled, and that he really wished I was there, too.

Normally such a sweet sentiment, but I felt it like a shock of lightning straight to my core.

The implications of 'you should have come with us' 'you never come with us anymore' 'when will I see you again' 'why don't you ever come home?'

When the truth is that I can't.
Not when I'm supposed to be giving my all at these jobs this summer. I get so burned out by the end of the week that I'm absolutely useless on the weekends, and I don't have a car to drive back and forth between our two cities whenever it's convenient.

And they know this. Or at least knew it at one point.

There is nothing more that I want than to be by my dad's side as he goes through his chemo treatments. I'm the most like him out of the family, and I think that having me around grounds him a bit. But I can't be there the days he gets the injections, during the resulting symptoms, in between it all to remind him how wonderful life is.

I have to leave that to my mom and my brother and keep faith that they're taking care of it all to the best of their ability.

But when I get these god awful texts! I just want to give up!

I get all of the complaints about the mood swings, about the sadness in the house, and then whenever I try to keep the mood light I get told something to the effect of "the chemo is rough on dad"
as if I don't know that it's hard on him, or can't appreciate it to the level that it is.

And that kills me.
Just what am I supposed to do?
Crawl back into my tangled existence inside my heart, already heavy with guilt.


On another completely unrelated note, I was shuffling through my iTunes this morning at work and came to the conclusion that this song encapsulates Bio:Shock Infinite for me, concerning Elizabeth and Booker.

Wanderlusting

As my first (and potentially last) summer staying on campus begins, I have come to the realization that traveling and road trips have become rather a necessity for me.

A large part of me yearns to pack up the car, hop in the passenger seat, and drive with the boy somewhere new and different for a bit.

I haven't spent a summer home in years. I say this rather unfortunately as my family are such a huge part of my life and school keeps me away 9 months of the year already. Last year I spent it in Wyoming, the year before: Japan, the year before that: Traverse City.

Is it because I've traveled these past few summers that I long to travel again, now?
Maybe.

There's just something so irreplaceable in the feeling I get on road trips.
It curls itself up in my heart and tickles at the sides.

I'd compare it to how music can make me feel,
but whereas the melodies oft remind me how I am so very alive
traveling re-opens my eyes to how the world is so large and so full of possibility,
so never lose hope or stop dreaming.


Hopefully I can escape for a bit this summer.
We'll see.

In the mean time, here's a song.