I have spent most of today feeling kind of quietly hysterical. You know, calm, soft-spoken, but gibbering on the inside. It makes me laugh at myself.

When I was a kid, I really loved dollhouses. Not so much the precious, twee girlie ones. I thought Barbie's Dream House was lame. I liked the cunning ones that had real craftsmanship behind them. My father had some appreciation for this passion, as he was really into model trains. We liked the miniatures, he and I.

So when I was about nine or so, my big Christmas gift was a dollhouse. It hadn't been put together yet, it was the frame and cut out wood bits and base and whatnot. The plan was that my father would build it and I would help do things like the shingles on the roof and shutters and stuff. I was really excited about it. See, my father is brilliant. I guess that is part of what makes everything so fucking sad. There were times when he was sober and kept his hands to himself, he was brilliant and fascinating and he taught me so much about history, politics, art. It's all the could-have-beens that kill me. But I was really excited that my father and I had a Project and he would be Spending Time With Me and it would be fun.

Only, it didn't happen. He got as far as staining the wood and trimming down some pieces and then he stopped. I would ask him and ask him if we could do stuff with it, put it together, and there was always a reason he couldn't. A lot of times the reason was, "Not today," or "I don't feel like it right now." Or he would just be too plastered to do anything but drink some more. When we went to the miniatures store I bought little tiny pieces of furniture and stuff to play with and I hoped it would go in the house when it was finally done. One of the things I bought was a little bunkbed with yellow pillows.

I graduated high school at 16. That tiny bunkbed was still sitting on my bookshelves when I went away to college. I asked my mother once if I could have the dollhouse. I thought that maybe I could try and put it together, even though I suck at that kind of thing. She laughed and said no, that someday her grandchildren would want to have things to play with when they went to visit grandma. I thought it then, and I think it now: If I ever manage to have children, they aren't going to ever meet their grandparents. Ever. My parents won't even know my children's names.

Everyone I have ever loved has broken their promises to me. I wish that they wouldn't make those promises in the first place. Hope is the cruelest thing there is.