samlak
I still remember the day when I told my mother I no longer wanted to be at home. I had had enough of so much pain, sorrow and the constant yelling everywhere. I saw my mother cry bitterly as she took the final decision to get a divorce. I was ten years at the time.
My father had always been a very strict man. He used to believe that his ways were the right ways and that everything had a logical order, he even considered himself “successful” because he had his own house, his own car, a high paid salary and a family. He indeed was a success at his office, since he had the guts to get everything done, but his own workers didn’t seem to follow him for the right reasons. They described my father as a man who liked to give orders and to keep things under control. He even told jokes at the expense of others to keep things “cool”, but in reality, those jokes were hurtful and humiliating. I don’t remember my father having any friends, nor saw him inviting anyone to our home for Christmas.
Father was always working hard, two shifts for five years. He later told me he did all that to give us a good future, but he was never present. I don’t recall him playing that much with me nor taking us on vacation. In fact, he used to beat me with a belt if I didn’t get good grades at elementary school. He used to bury in my head the thought of “be better than anyone else”. He wanted me to be as competitive as him, as successful as him. He wanted me to become like him.
But that wasn’t the whole reason why my parents divorced. My father, thinking he could do whatever he wanted, cheated on my mother with five different women, thinking my mother was not good enough for him anymore. Later in life I understood that it was him who felt not good enough.
One day he got very drunk and began calling me names like “Little cockroach” because he knew I would never be as good as him. That’s when I lost it. At ten years old, I jumped towards my father and blindly hit him in every part of his body that I could reach with my tiny fists. My mother came running from the kitchen and had to separate us because, since my father was a mountain of a man, he was easily giving me the beating of my life. That was the last straw for my mother.
That night she kicked him out of the house and I could never see him again for a few years.
After that day, we were shocked, but felt a small piece of relief. Eventually we finally found peace. The divorce helped my mother to mature, to become stronger and wiser. She had always been there for me and my kid sister. I grew up with the love of my mother who played the role of a father as well. My raising made me think that, if I ever had children, I would never let them live the hell I lived.
Time heals all wounds, or so that’s what they say. The age and many life experiences gave me the strength to finally see my father once again after so much time at a very sad family event. He was all by himself. None of the women he used to cheat with were in sight. We spoke few words, gave him my condolences and departed. It had been weird to see my father again after so much time.
One day he fell sick with kidney failure and was about to die. I went to see him at the hospital and it was really shocking to see the once strong man reduced to a thin ghost of a man wrapped in a hospital gown. There was no one around to help him but an aunt. No friends, no other women, no one. He was all alone. I spent days and night taking care of him at the hospital, we would joke around and remember the few good things we shared during my infancy. I soon realized my father was just another child that was hit and humiliated during his childhood. His parents had raised him the same way he was raising me, therefore, he grew up with those values carved in his heart.
That’s when I realized it made no sense to continue hating him for the horrible childhood he gave me. Life was already giving him a very tough lesson. Loneliness can be worse than death itself.
My father eventually recovered and left the hospital. To this day, I still speak to my father and pay him a visit at his house from time to time to see how he is doing. He is still the prideful man I knew in my infancy, and is still expecting me to become better than him. But this time, his words don’t hurt me at all.
