73. Excerpt from Anthony Stephens’ Mood Journal

April 2 2005,

Morning: 5 out of 10

Afternoon: 6 out of10

Evening: 7 out of 10

Looking back on my journal entries, I have come to the conclusion that I’m either bi-polar or just extremely indecisive.

One minute I’m revering the psychology field, the next I’m berating it.

One minute I think my mother’s faultless, the next she’s the reason I’m so screwed up.

The only thing I see that’s remained constant is this confusion about my father. Which is ironic: that my father’s the most stable issue in my head right now.

I remember this one time when I was like eight years old, right before Hurricane Andrew came through and fucked Miami up (that’s a whole other thing Dr. Silver thinks I should talk about, but I already talked to all those damn shrinks from UM about it after they rebuilt our house, back when I was like ten. Think I can deal with that on my own). My mom had gone up to visit her mother, my grandmother, in Toronto. My grandfather had just died and my grandmother was sick so my mom went to be with her for a little while. My dad stayed behind and took care of me for the few days my mom was gone. He was working at an art store back then, some place that sold canvases and paintbrushes and all that other stuff.

I remember being in school one of those days and looking forward to going home to see him, because he was almost always working when my mom was around. I didn’t know why I wanted to spend time with him, I just knew that I did, and I was so happy all day at school. I know. Homo.

Anyways, he came home that first day with a pad of high quality paper, a box of color pencils, another box of sharpened number 2 pencils and all types of markers and shit, this whole huge package of stuff he just handed me and told me was mine. I looked at him, surprised when he gave it to me and he gave me this slight smile, the only type of smile he ever really gave from what I can remember; kind of a nervous grin. He gave it to me, smiled and said “try it. See if you like it. If not, try something else.”

That day is one of the reasons I can’t say with any honesty that I hate my dad for leaving. Even though he did abandon us and never looked back, I have to believe he was just following his own advice.

And you can’t hate somebody for that.

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