All I Did Was Wonder

And it led me here.

The big wonder, the one I thought was too strange, too impossible, too ridiculous for a 48-year-old man to ask, was this—

How did I never truly know that I was loved?

And once I started wondering that…
Wonder ran away with me.

Because once you ask one question,
Once you open the door to one truth,
You start seeing the others.

And here’s one.
This one’s a good one.

I wondered why my dad once told me that one of his biggest regrets in life was not sleeping at night.

Weird thing to say, isn’t it?

---

And Then the Wonder Collided

One wonder, on its own, can be profound.
One can shake something loose,
One can turn something over,
One can be enough.

But when you add another…

When one big one, a strange one, meets a weird one,
And then another weird one stacks on top of that…

Something isn’t right.

---

Each moment of wonder led to another.
Not all of them seemed too far out of place.
But some did.

One of my weird wonders was this—
Why did my father’s companion tell him
That he didn’t think I wanted pictures of my childhood?

Or my mother’s ashes?

Why did he say that?

And then another wonder—
The kind that makes your stomach turn as a son—

Why would my father’s companion dare to say
That I didn’t visit my mom while she was in the hospital for the last time?

Why would she say that?

---

Each Answer Was a Piece of the Puzzle

I did go see my mom.
Every night, after work.

After the flights had taken off,
After the bags were loaded,
After the world had settled into sleep.

I sat with her.
Sometimes we talked.
Sometimes we didn’t.
Sometimes we just existed in the same space, sharing the silence.

But no one knew.

And then I wondered...

Why did it have to be a secret at all?

The secret wasn’t just mine.
It was hers too.

And I wondered—

Why would we have to keep that from my father, of all people?
Why would sitting in a hospital room, late at night, just me and my mom in her final days…
Why would that be a secret?

Why would it have to be ours?

Because if it had to be hidden, then what was the danger?

What was I protecting her from?

Or—

What was she protecting me from?

---

The Last Goodbye That Wasn’t

He was in the hospital, and this time, it wasn’t good.

I had this deep pull to be in Orlando.
To say goodbye.

And let me tell you,
That is an incredibly strange feeling to have about my father.

I mean, I’m not sure he had ever mattered this much to me before.

Weird.

But I went.
And I treated it like the last time I would see him.

Turns out, I was right.

But he’s still alive, as far as I know.

He said some strange shit while we were together in that hospital room.

He told me that I told on my mom for cheating on him when I was a kid,
Back when we were still in Plattsburgh.

I had no recollection of that.
None.

But it felt true.

Weird.

He told me he kept all the money I ever gave him.
Because I had paid him a lot of money for a lot of things.

And I had never thought that was weird.
Until that moment.

He told me it would be mine again one day.

And then—

Then, there was the goodbye.

He called me back into the room,
Grabbed my hand,
Squeezed it tight,
And said—

"I am proud of you, after all you have been through in your life."

That was our goodbye.

And what exactly was ending?

Because it wasn’t him.

But something was ending.

And maybe something else was revealing itself.

Like how I had no memory of telling on my mom.
But I believed it.

Like how I had no real attachment to the money I gave him.
But he kept it.

Like how he said goodbye—

Not with an apology.
Not with a confession.
But with the strangest truth of all…

He was proud of me.
After everything I had been through.

And I wondered…

Did he know what I had been through?

Did he know because he put me through it?

---

The Words That Stayed With Me

"How dare you question me?"

That was the first question I wrote down.
And it was fucking heavy.

Because I used it.
I had just used it on Ang an hour before.

But the thing with it was—
It had been used on me first.

Someone had taught me that.

And I wondered…

Who taught me to question myself like this?

Because "How dare you question me?"
That wasn’t mine.
That was given to me.

Handed down like an heirloom,
Sharpened like a blade,
Turned into a weapon before I ever knew I was holding it.

And I wasn’t just holding it.
I was it.

And then, the next thought.

"I am not a fucking liar."

Not a question.
Not an argument.
A fact.

But somehow—
It still felt like something I had to defend.

And the last thought, the one that made me drop the pen and lean back as far as possible…

"I am a good person."

Not a statement.
Not a fact.
Not a knowing.

But a question.

And then I wondered…

What kind of person spends their whole life waiting for permission to believe they are good?

---

And Then, 30 Minutes Later…

I saw the truth.

I remembered what my father had done to me.

And then I wondered—

How did I survive without knowing?
Or did I survive because I didn’t?

How could my own parents have done that to me?

Because once I saw it—
Once I knew—

Everything changed.

The truth wasn’t a curse.
The truth was a gift.

---

Most People Get It Backwards

Most people think my pain started
The moment I saw the truth in those memories.

That’s when everyone became concerned about me.
That’s when they started checking in.
That’s when they whispered behind my back.
That’s when they asked if I was okay.

But they were late.

Because those answers—

They weren’t breaking me.
They were putting me back together.
They were solving the hurt.
They were healing the hurt.

And I was just wondering...

Why did nobody ask before?

Before I had the answers.
Before I could see the shape of it.
Before I knew the weight I was carrying.

Why was nobody concerned when I was the most lost?

Because here’s the newsflash—

For the people who think they are working on healing,
For the ones still waiting for the answer to come,
For the ones suffering under the weight of questions they can’t even bring themselves to ask—

That’s when people should be concerned about you.

Not when you finally find the fucking answer.

Everyone has it backwards.

They come when you know.

But where the hell were they when you were drowning in doubt?
When the memories didn’t make sense?
When your whole life felt like one big question mark?

Nobody came then.

But the second I found the answer?

Suddenly, everyone was worried.

And I was just wondering...

What would change if people realized that the pain wasn’t in the knowing?

The pain was in the waiting.
The pain was in the doubt.
The pain was in the fucking wondering.

And once I knew?

The weight was gone.
The question was answered.

And I was finally—
finally—
free.