Today, the first mate told me that my men intend a mutiny, and that I have condemned an entire crew in search of a fabled leviathan that we would not have known what do to with had he existed in the first place.
"But we're sinking," he said, "and your daughter is in love with a boy back home, dreaming that she is living his life. She's asleep in the cabin, and if you have even a hint of sobriety in-between gulps from the last buoy she'll use to say goodbye, you'll turn this ship around."
It's too late. We're drowning.
Fathers of daughters just like mine, except theirs will live out their lives on land long after their daddies have died at sea. Some will remember them as noble men, the rest as having abandoned their roles for a pipe dream, all as good or godawful as their imaginations allow themselves to believe.
I do not know whether I care, or if I could not possibly care less.
When we first set sail and pushed off to sea, I stood at the bow looking everywhere but at my legacy, with that blue ribbon holding up her hair, eyes locked on the boy that I made her leave, waving. I have been chasing this great white dream for as long as catching him stood to promise that I could substantiate all the reasons I failed my family.
Well I wanted to be a brave man.
I wanted to prove to my wife that I wasn't a failure.
I wanted to tell my daughter that daddy always tried, and tried his hardest.
Tried his best to make it work.
His best was always at their expense, and all of the things that I idolized became my captors.
Now that it's too late, I know that drifting is a deeper threat than betrayal. No one has to convince you to abandon anything, you just inevitably end up downstream, maintain your pride and wonder why the world keeps on shifting, convinced you're still standing in the same place. You never mean to drift away.
Baby, if you survive and find this, I was right about one thing. Your mother used to say that I was afraid, but apathy is not the same as escape, and I was never running. It's just that I was never fighting.
Indifference sneaks in subtly, and subtleties can kill a man.
It will be of no comfort to you, though if there is a God, know that I will stand before him with no excuse, and I can only assume that he will weep,
"Tragedy, indeed, that innocence, though it never was, could have been."
