“Spence…”

“No, Dad. Seriously. I’m not going to let you think that this is what’s best for me when it’s clearly not. Did you ever even think that I maybe need some time to get used to being in the house without him there? Did you ever even think that I’m suffering too? Do you care?”

“Of course we care,” my father said, using his infuriating “psychiatry voice.”

I wasn’t his patient.

I was his daughter.

But the lines always blurred.

“Honey, you may not be able to understand this now, but one day you’ll see that it’s best to thrust yourself right back into life again,” my mother oozed, turning around in the passenger’s seat to diagnose me with a frightening grin and an assertive nod.

Another fucking psychiatrist.

Two shrinks for parents. Two times more dysfunctional than most kids my age. The numerical similarity isn’t lost on me.

I promise you this.

“You don’t get it,” I say, shaking my head in complete frustration, “summer camp isn’t ‘life.’ In fact, this is the exact opposite of what I would do if everything was the same. The fact that Glen died doesn’t make me want to go throw on a bathing suit and roast fucking marshmallows to the peaceful harmony of a campfire sing-along. It makes me want to cry and scream and fuck shit up and remember that I’m still here.”

“Language,” my mother quietly scolded.

“I’m sorry, mother. I’ll try to watch my profanity usage the next time I talk to you about my dead brother.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

She was so painfully unaware that it was almost comical. Unfortunately, it would quickly come to my attention that she was the only mother I was ever going to have and the punchline was suddenly forgotten in a pile of future psychosis and certain fear of commitment.

My adulthood would be an ironic nightmare. Most likely filled with even more therapy.

I couldn’t win.

“Positive attitude, Spencer. That’s what you need. This experience will be exactly the way you make it,” my father continued, “if you want it to be good then it will be good. If you want it to be bad, then…you know, it’ll be bad.”

“I wanted my brother to be alive. Didn’t work.”