You're hiding regret in your smile. There's a storm in your eyes that's been passing for awhile.

[Lie-David Cook]

today i decided to clean out my voice mail mailbox thing. see, im really bad about getting a voice mail, listening to it, then hanging up the phone before deleting it. or sometimes, i purposely save certain messages because of their sentimental value. at any rate, i decided to listen to all my old messages and get rid of the ones i didnt need. there were a few that i had just forgotten to erase: one from mom reminding me to bring something home, one from dani telling me to call her back, and things of that sort that i simply erased. there were other ones i kept because i meant to keep them: a funny message from my best friend meghan, a sweet message from an old friend angie, and a few others i resaved. but by far, the greatest number of messages on my phone were voice mails from my dad. and i said to myself, "Self, why do you have all these messages from dad on the phone?" and deep down i knew. now bear with me, im about to go all Dr. Phil on ya. almost all of my dads voice mails were super sweet, telling me how much he loved me and how proud he was of me, telling me how much he missed me and how much he wanted to see me. and i had saved all these messages because i thought thats what i wanted to hear. i thought that i would save all these messages of him saying these things and that would somehow fix everything between me and dad, that just cuz i had messages of him saying these words that it automatically made the words true. but then, as i listened to all these messages, i realized that the words were just that: words. empty words. words are meaningless unless there are actions to back them up. and the fact is, my dad had rarely produced any actions that back up his words. and all the time i had been saving those messages, i had been holding on to little falsities cuz i wanted them to be true. but ya know what? im done with them. i erased all the messages. well, all except one. the one message i saved from him is the one he left me the day after i confronted him about him taking mom back to court and told him how it upset me. we fought and i hung up on him and wouldnt speak to him. he called me and started out apologetically, but at the message went on, he got angrier and angrier. he started to criticize me for disagreeing with him. he said things that almost seemed like he was trying to draw me back into the fight. and i feel like that message outta all of them most accurately portrayed him. i saved that one to remind me of the real him. and one day i know i need to let go of that one too. but not yet.