So then I thought, maybe I should just stick to what I know.  I really can't divorce myself from what I write.  However, I can better define who I am as a writer.  First and foremost, I am bi-polar.  Secondly, I am southern.  However, these two important elements aside, I am also my father's (unwanted) daughter.  It is impossible for me to discern which of these characteristics has impacted me the most.  Rather I view them as interwoven.  In fact though before I was accurately diagnosed as bi-polar, I suspected that my depression stemmed from the inherent understanding, even at an improbably early age, that my father could never love me.  

I can still feel those days... the sharp summer sun, the steamy Mississippi mornings, skinned knees and mosquito bites.  I remember pushing a play mower behind my father as he mowed our lawn.  In the wilting heat, he had taken off his shirt.  I wanted so much to be embraced or at least recognized.  I took off my shirt too.  The scathing disdain.  I can remember that.  I cannot remember being kissed by anyone other than my grandmother or grandfather.  I can remember however the tacit disapproval and knowing even at 6 that I had earned it just by existing.

Years later, after our relationship had yawned into vacant formality, my father was diagnosed with stage VI lung cancer.  When my husband delivered this news, as he had retrieved the voicemail first, I felt a slight shudder.  I cannot recall though if I willed myself to feel nothing more or if I simply was unable to dredge up anything else.  For months, I kept the news within the family.  My brothers and I had hurried emotionless conversations about cancer and its impact.  When I finally did share the news with friends, that "Bio-Dad" as I had called him for years, was dying, I was surprised and slightly annoyed when they offered their sympathies.