Stoker awards, Father's Day

tw: suicide, dysfunctional family, child abuse, parental death, grief

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In case you missed it, my debut short story collection won a Stoker Award. That happened on Saturday. I'm still trying to process it today. None of it feels real yet. Part of me hopes it'd change when have the actual award in hand, but the rest of me thinks it won't happen for a while -- not until I process some of the accompanying grief.

See, the collection's eponymous story Some Breakable Things was written the day I found out my dad had died. It is me at the point of shatter, me as I unraveled, me as my heart lurched at the realization there'd never be a chance for reconciliation. There wouldn't even be the opportunity to say goodbye. (I recall numbly telling my mother I was on the first plane home and she said, "Don't bother. We're scattering his ashes later today.")

That first year destroyed me. The next year was worse. Out of the blue, my mother told me, 'actually, it wasn't a heart attack. He hung himself.'

I vividly remember blinking at her at the end of her explanation and declaring, "So, tomorrow we're signing me up for therapy. I am not dealing with this without a professional."

It's been long enough that I no longer flinch when the Father's Day ads fill my feeds. I don't break down crying in front of White Castle anymore. (My father would always take me there so I could get the paper crowns and feel like a princess.) I don't carry an emotional support bunny plushie anymore. (Those first few months, there was always one in my bag. I couldn't function unless either Judy or Jelly were there.)

But it doesn't mean the emotions are any less complicated.

He walked away from my family when I was seventeen. I turn thirty-nine this year. That means I have spent twenty-two years of my life without him, and well, twenty-two years is a lot more than seventeen, isn't it?

I don't know how to explain how strange that is to think of. When I was a kid, I worshipped him. He was a storyteller of the highest order, capable of keeping people spellbound with any small anecdote. People used to say he could charm a bird off a tree; I have no idea of he could but I remember him teaching me how to get butterflies to sit in my palm.

(I don't remember his voice anymore, or his laugh.)

He never got to see me become a writer. He has never read any of my short stories, has never seen my books on shelves. He'll never know what I've accomplished, never meet the people I love, never see photos of my cats. He'll never read the story that gave my collection its name, never know about the Stoker award, never see how I developed my own gift for storytelling, never meet me as an adult.

(Let me be clear about something: he wasn't a good man. He was the opposite of it. My father was a monster to us, and should have fucking left my fourteen-year old mother alone.)

I don't have the words for what I’m feeling right now. It’d be standard to say I miss him, but I don’t think I do. I used to, of course. Hell, my inner child used to pray we'd wake up and discover none of this had ever happened, that we're only eight and school is in a few hours, and we have a family and not fragments of glass in our bloody hands. These days, that inner child seems ambivalent towards the thought of him.

I think what I want more than anything else is the ability to tell him, "I survived you."

That I carry the best of him in me, and that I have spent years trying to carve out the worst parts of him. That I have his silver voice but my sense of ethics. That I have his stubbornness but my mother's ferocious drive. That I made beautiful things out of the pain he inflicted on us. That I know what monsters are because of him and I will never, ever let the people face them alone.

I had more to say but I’m crying too much to finish that knot of thoughts so I’m going to end with this:

Thank you.

Thank you for reading my books. Thank you for sharing my stories. Thank you for the gift of your attention and the grace of your time. Thank you for caring. I’m so beyond honored to receive a Stoker award, and so utterly stoked to receive one in this particular epoch of genre history. (Shoutout especially to Cynthia Pelayo and Gabino Iglesias for all the historic wins. Congratulations, you two. Now go buy all their books so you can say you’ve been reading them since before it was cool.)

I’m going to go lift large weights and put them down.

I love all of you.

As always, a cat photo: