After the fiasco of confronting my father, my parents discussed separating. My mother wanted my father to leave, but he would not. My father decided to let months pass in silence. He stayed in the house, we stayed in the house, and he continued his life. My mother, brothers, and I lived like zombies for months, never discussing the affair. My dad would go to work and come home as if nothing happened. A change occurred, a dent, a scar. I remember thinking that I should have been a better daughter. Was it my fault? The shattered mirror image of myself poked away at my mind; I should have been a better daughter. My own mind became my own prison. I wanted to be free. I wanted to go back to the way things used to be. I wanted to tell myself it was not my fault, but I could not. My father took that chance from me, from us. My father was my best friend and the only one who I could be free with and be just me, and I was scared to lose him.
After months of silence, my father moved out, and my mother, brothers, and I stayed in the house. We stayed in the house temporally because my father stopped paying for everything, so we moved to an apartment, while my father bought another home with his new girlfriend. My father did not want us in his