The Rustic Mansion

The Rustic Mansion

The rustic mansion, buried in a moat of pine-covered mountains, echoes with the voices of the generations. Packed tightly with brothers, sons, sisters, daughters, mothers, and fathers, the McMahon family crams into my grandfather's home deep within the wild of Montana. My father flashes through my memory. He owns my memory of that day. He picks me up and thrusts me into the air, so that I can reach out and clutch the horns of the antelope, deer, and mountain goats mounted on the rafters. The cousins watch in envy as my father tickles me and throws me around; I am his trophy. The sound of his voice calling me his baby brings me immediate comfort. Honor filled my heart- he is my father.

Perhaps I thought I would own his love forever. His love for me felt so resilient. I was his baby. He prided in me, as I did in him. He'd tell me that I loved like him, and that I thought like him. In his eyes I would never fail because he considered even my faults to be cute. Something resided within me that resided in him, he'd say, and he solidified the thought that he understood me and I could comprehend his actions in all situations. He would always tell me to make sure that I am happy, and make sure that I can talk. He told me that I was his favorite child, and that I was just like him. The love felt so real, and looking back I feel so blind.

My father left when I straddled childhood and adolescence. Fall of August I came home to my whole life obliterated. Anything I knew before had been lost, and any idea of love I had was altered. Perfection defined my views of my family, and life in general, before August 9th. After that night ended I knew hate, and anger, and the feeling of your heart physically aching. My mother cried hysterically- I had never seen her snap. My father studied me, collapsed, broken, and bawling on the stairs. I screamed at him to stay, and he shut the door. My parents had been humanized; my mother had broken, and my father had abandoned me.

After he left my father attempted to resist my transformation into adulthood. Grasping onto the childhood views he had installed within me, he attempted to condemn his actions by reinstating his love for me. I was exactly like him. I understood him. He couldn't talk to my mother, and he was not happy. He even said that I wasn't like my mother; I couldn't talk to her either, just like he couldn't. He said that if I never would have grown up he wouldn't have left.

Unfortunately, my father's teachings went against him. While having his talks with me, he taught to think, and to examine different angles of situations. While trying to convince me of his points of view, I began to formulate my own opinions. Everything he had installed in me to believe seemed to be black and white. He had brainwashed me. My father had been trying to prepare me to accept him for cheating on my mother and deserting my family. The pieces jumbled in my brain slowly started to crystallize, as did my feelings of betrayal.

Even six years later, after he has married his mistress and created a new family with a new house on a mountain, I still want to believe him. I want to think that