Totally not Orion's Diary (It has bars damnit)

September 27th, Ten years ago

I got a letter from my Pa today.  Been almost two months, but he said he's been working through some shit.  They got him doing all sorts of "Fruity" shit as he says, which I don't know how that sits with me, but his words are his words.  He says they have him meditating every day, doing things like breathing exercises and dieting and eating right.  They say the key to a healthy mind is a healthy body and all that, and if it works for him it works for him I guess.  He says his misses me and the fam, and he's sorry that it took something as nuclear as going away to sort himself out, but sometimes you need to hit rock bottom in order to start climbing back up.  He says there's so much he wants to tell me, but a letter isn't the place to do it, and when he gets home we're going to have a long talk about a lot of things.  I don't really know what he's on about, and honestly it sounds kinda scary, but I trust my pa.

I ask Uncle Mac about my dad a lot, I don't remember a lot from when I was younger, even now my memories of ma are getting a lil hazy and some of the details are lost, so he helps me remember.  The man apparently compulsively records family videos, so he has shit from when I was a baby waddling around on christmas day, my mom and dad sitting on the couch big ole smiles on their faces.  I can't remember the last time I saw my dad smile.

Mac says that the deeper the grief we feel for someone when they're gone, the greater the love we had for them, and to grieve deeply is the final step of truly loving someone.  I don't quite understand that, but he says that hopefully one day I will.  I ask if that means that dad really loved mom, and Mac said yes, more than I could imagine.  He says my dad has always been a fighter, someone ready to jump into the fray at any point, but never without reason.  Paris Cayge always threw hands for something worth fighting for, and when he met my mom she became the one thing he would always fight for, and then I was born and that fire doubled.  When my mom left, it was like a waterfall had been dumped on the fire and it left my dad a smoldering mess, all of his passion and drive was sucked from him.

I asked him if I would find something worth fighting for one day and he simply chuckled and told me.  "If you open your heart to the world, you find every reason to keep fighting for it."

I don't quite get it, but I'm trying to make sure I understand, it sounds important.