Everyday is that Thursday morning.

I feel very strange today.

Sort of detached...like I'm outside myself looking in.

I see my surroundings as a prison of my own making. The cell door is open but I don't seem to have the will to get up and walk out into freedom.

I've got the car, I've got some money, and the opportunity to go out and do some bead shopping but the idea of leaving just doesn't appeal to me.

The idea of staying here all day doesn't appeal to me either.

I feel like my body and soul are trapped in a barren wasteland.

Strangely enough, I know that I possess the power to lift myself up and out of the wasteland but it's like I feel like I don't deserve it. I'm keeping myself here, stagnating, in order to punish myself for sins I may or may not have even committed.

I'm wasting my life because I feel like a failure.

I've failed my father and I continue to fail myself.

I've failed my father in so many ways. Our relationship was never the healthiest...there was a dependency that crippled the both of us in some ways. He desperately needed to be needed in order to feel happy and like all was right with the world. I needed him to be happy for my world to make sense so I would always make sure that he felt I needed him. The two of us enabled each other which laid the foundations for the troubled times that unfolded before his death.

The fact that he wanted my sister and I to be happy and successful in life was constantly at war with his desperate need for us to be dependent on him.

In my life, I found love. I met my soulmate and while my dad embraced him as a son, there was also a part of him that felt utterly lost. He believed that I no longer needed him and a distance began to grow between us.

His health was also getting worse and after a lifetime of caring for him in what ways I could, I began to resent him for not taking care of himself. I knew he would never live to be an elderly man, but at the same time he would never do the simple things to ensure that he would live as long as he could.

Between him feeling like I didn't need him anymore and me being angry that he wouldn't take care of himself, the distance grew to epic proportions.

He was my hero, my dad that made everyone jealous. His very presence lit up a room and made it feel alive.

But that all changed.

There would be days on end where we would barely speak to each other. The distance was too great and neither one of us could understand what was happening to our once close emotional bond.

My strongest memory of the days before he died was the two of us sitting at the table eating breakfast. The silence was screaming with all the things we didn't know how to say. The fact that he would sit there and not look at me hurt me so much that even know I feel suffocated by the pain. I'm sure the fact that I didn't speak to him caused similar wounds.

His life and his daugher's lives weren't turning out the way that he imagined.

I got married and was working in a bookstore when he had hoped that I would be the first person in the family to get a Ph.D. His rocky marriage with my mother had finally reached the end and they were officially divorced 5 days before he died. His health was getting worse and the doctors were starting to look for cancer. He watched both of his parents die slow, painful deaths from cancer and I believe the prospect of cancer terrified him beyond words. The doctors were also testing his heart again with the belief that he made need heart surgery again. And all through this, we weren't talking.

It seems he had had enough.

While his death was not officially a suicide, I believe he had given up.

He wanted to die.

For two days he refused all food, and we're still not sure about his insulin and other medicines.

For two days we asked, begged, and threatened him and nothing worked.

But I don't think I reached out to him in the way that he needed.

I also never picked up the phone to call his doctor...only threatened to call the doctor.

He didn't need threats and begging from a hurt, angry and resentful daughter. He needed closeness...he needed my love. That was the one part of myself that I with-held from him in my anger. A year's worth of hurt, resentment, and unspoken words was too difficult for me to put aside when he really needed me.

And so he shut us all out.

He refused all care including even our presence. He shut himself away, alone in his room, and deliberately gave up. I'm certain he knew what he was doing.

He went into insulin shock on a Thursday morning before I left for work.

I knew he was having difficulty.

I got him some juice that my sister brought to him but in my anger, I believed that he was fine, just being overly dramatic as he often was about other things.

I left the house for work, cursing him for not taking care of himself.

While I was at work simmering with anger, he lapsed into a diabetic coma and his heart began to falter. His body was too weak and a massive heart attack followed.

I wasn't there when he died.

He is gone and I'm left with all the anger and resentment, and the overwhelming feeling that I failed him.

Everyday is that Thursday morning.

Everyday I fail him.

And now, I don't work, have severe problems with anxiety and depression, leave my house a mess, rarely take care of my husband the way I should, have unhealthy eating habits, jab, cut, and claw at my skin until I bleed and scar, smoke, and have a tendency to be a shut in.

Every day I fail him.

I couldn't save him, so I don't deserve to save myself.

My life has become stagnant as I wait for a day when I can forgive myself for all the things I should have done and didn't.

I live in pennance but as I punish myself those around me suffer as well.

Therefore, continual failure spins around me like a centrifuge...always in motion but never going anywhere.

Everyday I fail.