Instead of strike right back, John took out the flash of anger on the door as he climbed into the truck and slammed it. It was one thing to take advice from a person, like Mary, who'd made her own mistakes and learned from them, who lived every day to the fullest because she embraced being alive again, who understood John – and it was another to feel preached at by his own son when John no longer thought Sam understood the situation, John or even Sam himself anymore.
"I don't think you have any damn idea what you need from me," he said quietly, after he'd backed out of the parking lot and got on the road. "You act like you want a father who's there, but when I have been, you've decided I must be damned crazy for doing it. When I don't agree with you, it's because I don't get it, because I don't care, or just because I have to be the wrong one so you can be the right one. Even when later it turns out I'm right, you just act like it never got said, like I still was somehow wrong."
Plenty of times in his life John hadn't known how to deal with his son, what to do to make Sam happy, because the gratitude had been brief and sporadic amid all the fighting. But hearing Sam talking now, all it told John was that Sam didn't know a damn thing about him either, after all, and john could try and explain more and Sam would just keep seeing the man he thought John Winchester was, not the man John actually was.
"In the end, you're just shaping the world the way you want it to be, the way you think it should be, even when it means you being on one side of the fence one day and then on the other damn side the next. You're not looking to see if things are right, you're just assuming they're wrong because it's not your side. Like with me, you pick the opposite of whatever I'm doing or saying, just to fight me on it. I could be right and you'll just run right into oncoming traffic to avoid acknowledging I ever am. I'm at the end of my rope as to how to deal with you, Sammy. I've tried, God knows I've tried, and even the things I did to do better weren't good enough for you."
Hands gripping the wheel to control his speed, which remained relatively safe for busy LA streets, John kept his eyes on the road. "So until you can actually live your life to the fullest instead of making a hundred excuses for why you can't any more, for why you have to settle instead of make something for yourself, you don't really have any footing to tell other people to live life the whole way."