Today I Lived

After staying up for over 24 hours out of fear, I finally told my dad almost everything. I told him that I felt like therapy wasn't helping to improve our relationship because it was headed in all of the wrong directions. I told him that I wasn't over the fact that he cheated on my mom after being married for over twenty-five years, even though we've all known about it for five months already. I told him how I hated being treated like a four-year-old even though I'm seventeen, and how it's made me insecure, how it's made me feel like I don't deserve the respect of adults or my peers. I told him how I almost wanted to give up on our relationship because of how I feel, and I told him how much the idea of giving up scared me. I told him how much I hate everything I'm put through every day living through this divorce. I told him the reason why I didn't want to go to therapy in the first place: that I didn't want to have to bring all of my feelings out. I felt like I humiliated myself. I cried for what seemed like forever, to the point where the pain was more than metaphorical. I could not stand being in that room, bleeding my heart out, confessing the feelings I'd been piling up for years.
And for the first time, he listened.
And I am so relieved that he did.