It will be okay. It has to be.

I have three choices.

I could walk right up to the door and seal my fate right here and now. I could try once again to climb through the window as i did the last time although it didn't end well. I could also just sit out here and wait the two hours until my father wakes up. Whichever way, I am in big trouble. I am not drunk enough to deceive myself that this will end well. I am pretty certain I have pushed the final button. I am not sure though, just what my father is capable of when he totally loses it.

I decide to wait it out in the cold. Perhaps he will see that I was thoughtful enough to not wake him up from his sleep and the punishment will be lighter. I am chilled to the bone and my jacket is of no use now. I stagger to the back of the house and slowly lower my beat body onto an old rug that my  mother usually insists we wipe our shoes on.

My intention was not to drink.

I simply went because it did not make sense to go home at 6pm on a Friday evening. I would have to sit through a polite dinner where everyone tried hard to not talk about the thing, the polite dinner where my father would ask about work and I wouldn't know what to say. I hate my job. My father got it for me. A sort of last attempt at helping his wayward son. If you were me, you would hate it too. You might probably argue that in this economy, a job is a job and I should stop being churlish.

The intention was to sit with friends, dance a little and come home by midnight. I have curfew. Me, a grown man, 29years old, I have a curfew and my father enforces it as much as he can. He likes to remind me of my many shortcomings. And they are many.

I see his face and I know I am done for.

He as usual, was the first one up. 5am on the dot.
Normally I drink myself silly and I do not remember what he says when I show up.
Today is different.
My brain refuses to allow my body the luxury. Every thing I drank came right out as soon as I stepped out of the bar. I got the feeling of drunkenness but by the time I lowered my body onto the rug, all my faculties had sobered up.

I do not know which is worse.
The silence or the thoughts of the verbal lashing that is bound to come.
He says nothing and just opens the door wide enough for me to walk in. I walk right by him, fully aware of the stench of vomit mixed with alcohol. Within seconds, I am standing in my room wondering if I should shower first or just fall on the bed and sleep. I realise that sleep is the last thing on my mind so I opt for water and soap.

I was not always like this.

There was a time when I was a better man. I was my fathers pride and joy. I was my mothers son, the one she told everyone about. I was my sister's big brother, the one who made sure no one bullied her, the one who listened to all her stories and stole the food off her plate when they wouldn't let her off the table until the plate was clear. I was the one who should have been watching her that day. I swear, I was watching her, I really was.

She was turning 8 and I was turning 17. We were born on the same day and we liked that little detail. We never understood how it could have happened but it did. We always did something special on that day even when there was no money. That year, we went to lunch at a big fancy restaurant where we could see the greater part of the city from the rooftop.

When she asked my parents if she could go sit by the pool, she liked to do that, (sit and allow her feet to rest in the water) they said yes and asked me to watch her. I did watch her. I really did. I saw her fall in the water. She had given me her shoes to hold so she wouldn't get them wet. I run to the edge of the pool and I was just about to jump in when she came back to the top sputtering.

We didn't think much of it.

My father joked about it, I remember, he said she had gotten her birthday dunking all by herself. We weren't laughing a few hours after we got into the house and she wasn't breathing. On the way home, she had turned to me in the backseat and told me her chest hurt. I teased her about that, told her she was too young to have girls chest problem. When we got out of the car, she started to cough real bad. In between fits, she said she was very tired so mother took her to the room to lie down. She asked me to put the kettle on so she could warm her some milk.

She was gone by the time mother took her the milk.

Even now I catch myself shaking my head in my sleep. It still feels like I have the chance I had then to do something. Do what, you wonder, Not laugh. It hurts me that I laughed. I dream that I am laughing and she is turning a different colour and saying her chest hurts and I am still laughing. I was closer to her than anyone else and yet I never paid attention.

There should be a sign that the people close to you get when you are about to leave them.

If we had thought to take her to hospital when she said she had chest pain, when she started to cough, she would be 20years old today. We would be somewhere laughing about the incident at the pool. When they told us at the hospital that she had drowned, I stared at the doctor. I did not understand. My father explained to them that she had gotten out of the water okay. That we had driven home when she was okay. I told them that she had said her chest hurt. My mother quietly spoke of the cough. The doctor said that it was called secondary drowning.

That water got into her lungs and built up. There was an excess collection of water in her lungs that made it hard for her to breathe. How were we to know a thing like that? She was fine when she got out of the water.

I dropped out of school that year.

The last couple of years have been a blur. I was away from home a while trying to find myself. My mother often came to find me and then my father tried, more for my mother than me. He took me to a rehabilitation centre. I was there a while, came out and went back in. Two years ago, I went back home. I had no where else to go. On bad days, I drink myself silly and listen to my father tell me how my behaviour tortures my mother. I listen to him tell me how she cannot lose another child. I never hear him say what it does to him.

Yesterday was different.

She was right there in my head. She wouldn't leave. She was sad and she was crying. She said she missed me and she wanted me to be better. She said she wanted me to live and be okay. I felt that it was too much to ask. How could I live on when I didn't help her live?

He knocked on my door as I sat on my bed after the shower, letting the tears flow freely. I couldn't bring myself to have a shouting match. Not today, not now. I kept quiet and hoped he would leave. He didn't. He walked in and sat by me on the bed. We sat like that for a while. Me, wondering what it was I was going to have to do to be forgiven, him, staring at his hands. I felt him move and his hand touched my shoulder for a moment before it fell back on his lap to clasp the other. And then he looked at me and said.

"It will be okay."

The days are long, the years are hard, but now I feel that he sees me. He sees me as a person, not just the me who failed to protect her.