Talk in the forums about Juumonji and his dad made me write this little angsty buffet.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters who are never mentioned.
I know he hates me.
He hates the way that I criticize his friends, that I can recognize the scent of cigarette smoke even after he's heaped on that cheap cologne from the corner store to try and cover it up. I know when he drinks and every time he comes home afterward I can feel the little boy I raised slipping further and further away. He hates it when I try and connect with him- but that's a teenager thing. He hates it when I try and get him to come home at a reasonable hour, and I hate myself for being my own father and never enforcing it- afraid he'll hate me more.
He hates that I am the only family he has left, and so took up with those two dead weights. Now I'm not the only one he has and it scares me.
I hate that he's more willing to listen to them than me. They're pulling him down. There's no way he's going to listen to me. He wants me to hate him as much as he hates me. But I can't.
I used to be a delinquent. It brought me down so low that I didn't know who I was anymore. I was scared, but too drunk, stoned and generally fucked up to realize it.
One day when I was sober- a miracle in itself- I remembered how things used to be, when I spent money on more than just alcohol, blow and the occasional bento. Back when I had a job and didn't steal shit to pay for stuff, or fight for money. When no one wanted me dead. I had a girlfriend or two back then, not just the occasional hooker, but someone who had respect for herself and only expected love back from a lover.
But I can't tell him all this, because I'm so self-righteous and great. Because that would make me a hypocrite in his eyes. And even I couldn't live with myself then. It's the one thing we have in common- the belief that all hypocrites are bastards.
It took me so much time, effort and pain to get to where I am now. With a steady job and a house and a son who survived to the age of seventeen; it used to be a miracle that I had reached twenty-one.
I wish I could tell him about my experience, how he shouldn't go that road. To try and save him. But I stay quiet mostly. Just letting my disapproval be know. All because I can't talk to my son man to man.
I can't bring myself to make him hate me more.
