I would rather be anywhere but here. If I could have walked myself home I would have, without a moments hesitation. Never mind that my home was about an hour from Pleasant Grove and it was a blizzard outside. The winter storm would have made me feel more welcome than sitting in my dad’s car. Here, sitting next to my father, so close I could reach out and grab him. It was so ironic that I was finally so close to my dad, but in that moment I wanted to be the farthest from him. Life was like that, always giving you something you don’t want at the time and silently laughing in you’re face because you once wanted it.

I could feel the tension in the air, you could practically cut it with a blunt blade. It existed and it was real. I looked out the car window, the world was swirling before my eyes, a mess of colors exploding outside like tiny bombs. Next to me my father started clearing his throat, he was going to start talking, and I clenched my hands into tight fists.

Please don’t start talking, please don’t try to explain anything to me. I don’t care anymore, I tried to send my silent prayer to a merciful God but it didn’t seem to make it before my father started explaining.

“It will be a good thing.” He let his sentence hang in the air.

“Yup.” I muttered. Couldn’t he tell that I wasn’t interested in anything he had to say? I didn’t care that his wife was pregnant with his legitimate child, while I was his high school love kid. The way I saw it was I was a mistake, never meant to be and he reaffirmed that when he treated me like I was nothing to him.

“We’re really excited. It’s like we get to start all over.” He continued on, not picking up any of the social cues I was sending him. If someone continually gives you one worded answers what they’re really trying to say is, I’m not interested.

“Yeah, that must be really exciting.” Except you’re both forgetting that you let the other spouse take care of your other children. This isn’t starting over, this is just beginning. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him this sad fact, so I bit my tongue and stored my anger.

“Jenny says that she wants the baby to be raised in the Church. So it can turn out to be as great as you and Madi are.” He smiled over at me and my heart crushed.

Why did his smile still have that affect on me? Why did I suddenly want to be his kid and why did I want to make him proud of me? I thought I had given up on those daddy dreams forever ago, but I must have been wrong. I still wanted him to be my father just as badly as before.

“So are you going to do it? I mean, raise it in the Church?” I said. I was still processing the fact that Jenny had called me great. She had made it very clear before what she thought of me. She saw me as an object of hate. I had never done anything to her, but she openly admitted that she used to like me. But now she thought I was great? It was all too much to handle.

First I was told that I was going to have another sibling, then I was told by the woman who had openly hated me, that she wanted her kid to be like me. It was like a punch to the gut. I felt like I needed to vomit, to get rid of all the poisonous thoughts that were swelling up in my body. Don’t do this to me, not now, not when I started believing that I was in control.

“Of course we are. It’s what she wants. You know, Jenny thinks you guys are pretty remarkable.” A smile split his face and broke my heart.

If he knew how I felt about Jenny he wouldn’t be smiling. I hated her, I hated who she had changed my father to be. He was selfish and self centered, he was always made to be the victim. He was pathetic. But I wasn’t thinking that at all.

She thought I was remarkable, while I harbored hatred in my heart for her. Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy.

“Really?” I practically sneered.

“Kourtney, she thinks highly of you. She wants this baby to be like you.” He chanced a glance at me while driving, and I tried to look excited or pleased or anything besides what I was really feeling. Betrayed. Whether Jenny knew it or not she had changed our relationship. I was comfortable with the thought that she hated me, and she knew how I felt about her. We were comfortable that way. But now she was praising me, practically begging to have a child like me, and I was totally thrown off my game. It felt like a slap to the face.

After ten years of warring, ten years of stepping on egg shells as to avoid waking the beast inside her, she was admitting that I was not only a good kid but one so worthy as to be a model child for any possible others. It just didn’t settle well. I didn’t know how to react. I had been waiting my whole life for Jenny to let me have my dad back, but when she gave him to me, I realized that I didn’t want him.

I didn’t remember the rest of the conversation and I couldn’t really tell you what direction it took because I stopped caring. My ears were only hearing the last sentence my father had uttered, “She wants this baby to be like you.”

If you really knew who I was you wouldn’t want this baby to be anything like me, the thought kept repeating itself through my head, like a broken CD player. Don’t put that pressure on me. I never asked you to raise a kid like me. Don’t do this to me.

Don’t do this to me.

Remember, Jenny is the monster. She was the one that stole your father from you, she was the one that made it crystal clear that you were not welcome in their home. She was the one that attacked your beliefs. She was the one that you hated to the core. She was the one that made you cry countless times because she treated you like you were nothing and convinced your dad to do the same. She was the one that caused you so much pain.

Then why am I the one that feels like such a monster?