When I was a child, I waited for my mind to grow, for my

experiences to accumulate and my choices to solidify, taking shape into
the likeness of a person. That person, or that likeness of one, had
belonged. I was of that mountain, the mountain that had made me. It
was only as I grew older that I wondered if how I had started is how I
would end—if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape.

As I write the final words of this story, I’ve not seen my parents in
years, since my grandmother’s funeral. I’m close to Tyler, Richard and
Tony, and from them, as well as from other family, I hear of the
ongoing drama on the mountain—the injuries, violence and shifting
loyalties. But it comes to me now as distant hearsay, which is a gift. I
don’t know if the separation is permanent, if one day I will find a way
back, but it has brought me peace.

That peace did not come easily. I spent two years enumerating my
father’s flaws, constantly updating the tally, as if reciting every
resentment, every real and imagined act of cruelty, of neglect, would
justify my decision to cut him from my life. Once justified, I thought
the strangling guilt would release me and I could catch my breath.

But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage
directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them.
Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with
other people.

I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms,
without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his
sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I learned to
accept my decision for my own sake, because of me, not because of
him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it.