It's better to risk everything than to hold onto nothing -- Summer 1999

I had just gotten back home after graduation and I needed to confront my uncle.  He lied to me for years!  Lincoln had not been okay!  I needed to talk to him about everything... I just hoped that Iwould not scream constantly at him.  I felt so betrayed by the only person I had trusted for years... the man I thought would never lie to me.  The man I viewed as a fatherly figure -- though no one could replace my own father... but I would never see him again.  He died.  At the hand of my mother, apparently.

I ran a hand through my hair and found Uncle Chris out in the backyard doing some landscaping.  "We need to talk," I said, my voice shaky wiht anger.

He called me son?  Did he really think that I was his son?  If I was, then he would have told me the truth.  "I am not your son," I said darkly.  I really needed to try to control myself.

"It's coming from the fact that you've been lying to me!" I shouted at him, glaring at Uncle Chris.  I was so not going to deal with this.

Was he really this clueless or did the man in front of me easily continue to lie to my face?  I already knew that answer and it sickened me.  He was no better than the parents that I had left behind -- the grandparents that Lincoln was forced to live with for years until a family -- i could not find who specifically -- had adopted him.  "You told me everything was fine!  That they lived like a normal family!  How could you have even kept me from going to my own dad's funeral?" I asked, letting my anger out so it disguised my anguish.

I stepped away from Uncle Chris and just stared at him, appalled at the thought that he called me his son.  "I was never your son, Uncle Chris.  You were nothing ever more than my uncle to me," I spat at him.  "My family was in England!  Always has been... I used to love you... but you're just a stranger to me now.  Do you realize that?  Because of your lies... I'm out of here."

I felt a vice closing around my heart because he was right.  There was nowhere for me to go to be safe.  I would have to figure out how to handle this here until I could leave.  "None of that matters," I said to him simply.  "Because I'm leaving.  No matter what I have to do -- I'm not going to put up with you any longer."

I could not believe my ears.  "What do you mean?  I've done nothing but worship you because you saved me from that hell hole," I spat at him.  "The only thing that kept me from completelly idolizing you is the fact that you didn't save my brother, too.  I can't believe you.... I'm out of here," I said, unable to even talk to my uncle.

"You're not my dad.  I could never love you like one.  I loved you like my savior, though.  You just never fucking realized it," I spat at him, trying to shove past him.  I was not going to deal with this.