I want you dead... Dad.

I don't want their sympathy. It doesn't bother me if he's terminal. Sometimes I'll tell them I want him to die just to wipe that stupid expression off their face. Only later, when alone and within the company of a blade, do I spin the snapshot album of memories through my mind and allow them to reassure me.

Another bad day. More negative thoughts. I don't think I care anymore. Just another section of wasted time spent time witnessing my father's battle with the unreachable and melancholic demons of sobriety and consciousness. That line sounds a lot nicer than it feels. As I write my fingertips are touching broken glass, my mind hurts. And I'm hungry.

A friend asked me today 'hey, you ok?' When am I ever?

I'm sure it's harder to be him. The only times I think of my own death are when I'm planning. He has the all-consuming thought of his illusive and unclear demise. It would be so much easier if we knew more about it, but he refuses the possibility of more knowledge: too afraid that the doctors are going to label the number of days left. He thinks he can dull the pain and refuse his reality by drinking and sleeping – watching the world through the screen of a TV, the page of a newspaper, the voices of his infrequent visitors. Every new day is unwelcome, and every bad day is spent inside his room, filling himself with polluting and damaging chemicals and sleeping until he confuses the much-preferred dreams with his unwanted reality.

I've been called a liar behind my back by adults. Friends have told me their mothers thought I was an attention seeker. They said 'if her father doesn't work, then how could he be asleep at 1 in the afternoon?' Why are you asleep all the time, Dad? Does being terminal give you an excuse to order us about and do absolutely nothing apart from making more mess and more smoke? Mum spends all her time working – three dependant beings needing her for food and clothing. Don't you think, Dad, that she might not have to work for seven days a week if she wasn't fuelling your stupid addictions? Maybe I could actually get my homework and coursework done on time if I wasn't hanging out the washing and washing up the plates that you do not have enough time in your empty days to do?

I remember the doors we had to replace, because you'd thumped them and screamed into them until they caved. I remember the wall that came crashing down, under the blow of the sledge hammer you held. I remember the raining dust, the hanging wires, the fallen rubble. I remember the shouting filling the house; the swearwords, the anger. My childhood was filled with beer bottles and ashtrays, every memory had a black lining. I remember the way you'd scream, and the way your eyes would blacken with fury. I remember how your eyes looked when you were really angry: everything about you changed, right to the core, even your words and your actions. I remember seeing my parents drunk as a child. I was lost, I was alone. I remember my mother collapsing, bile rising, my father shouting, falling, smiling. I remember you threatening to burn all my animals alive. I remember you holding a lighter up to my pet rabbit. I remember your jokes that weren't jokes, your threats that you carried out. I remember sleeping alone on the living room floor, shivering and wondering. I remember wanting to run away, hide, scream, and recently just wanting to die.
I even remember the bruises, Dad. We don't talk about them now, and I doubt you or mum even remember. But I remember trying to run, and being grabbed, and feeling it landing upon my back, again and again, and then being dropped to the floor, crying. And mum still drinking, still smiling. I remember.

I wish he would pick between being alive and dead, because this in-between is infuriating. I don't know whether to dwell on his death and try to appreciate his existence, or stop thinking about it and get on with the life I've managed to form.

I spend most nights awake with insomnia and hunger. When I hear him cough, my heart drops, because until this point I have listened with anticipation for the realisation that he is dead. His heavy breathing drifts around the house on clouds of smoke, ghostlike and restless, passing through walls and snaking under closed doors. Illustrating his torture is the coughing, accompanied by an orchestrated army of rasping, retching and the daily regurgitation of alcohol. It's like his body is taunting him: depriving him of his sanity saving addiction by forcing it up his phlegm coated oesophagus. The amount of time he spends pleading for this precious supply of drink – a shameless beggar – makes me question if it is worth the few hours of mind numbing relief.  

I don't remember when he had money, or a job. When I look into his bloodshot eyes I don't see the shadow of the man he once was. He's just a worthless shell. No longer wanting or deserving of life. Every day I watch him force down the endless pills, and I wonder… could that medication go to a more worthy being? A creature more deserving of life? A toad, perhaps? A rat? The 'real him' isn't trapped inside… its dead; strangled, suffocated, slaughtered. He's just a thing with an illness who won't get out of my life.

And my friends ask me why I want him to die. Well.

Why on earth would I want him to live? It's like watching stale water drool from a broken bottle. It's like watching a knife dig into skin and the veins emptying until there's absolutely nothing left. It's like watching something realise it's going to die over and over again.

Time passes like a snail on broken glass. I can't stand him. Want him dead. Want him to leave. There's nothing quite like hating a loved one. Smothered by an absolute inability to see a familiar, paternal figure through the nearly opaque cloud of hate. Not worthy of its life or anyone's love.

I pass through the days, wading through black water, unable to see into the future. In a year's time, will I be in the same place, or will he be dead? Would I be happy and unaffected? It scares me more that he might live another year, than that he might die tomorrow. I know it's sick but I want to be the one to find him, so that I have a few moments with his corpse to finally tell him how much I've loathed him all these years. When I found out he was ill I was excited. When I watched him almost die I was fascinated. When I watched him tell the paramedics he felt fine I was disappointed.
What I want is to be happy.

So we shall try, Dad. I will hate you and you will drink and smoke and gradually destroy yourself. And we shall both try and bring forward the moment of your final end. I look forward to the headstone with your name on it, the funeral with your body in the coffin. I long for the day I can say: R.I.P, Dad.

I long for the day you are dead.