***Here is an old post of mine that I have updated, now that I am 22 years old I had so much more to add to this piece. I hope you enjoy 🙂
As a child, the most uncertainty I’d dealt with in my life had been fairly innocent and inconsequential. You know, uncertainty as to how I’d manage to get out of vacuuming the living room, uncertainty about which crops I should plant out of my hard-earned fake video game money in some farming game that I spent far too many hours of my life absorbed in. But I can’t say the same about how it’s been for the last 5 or so years. Things have changed in my life. Things have changed so much, in fact, that it makes me mourn the uncertainties of the past like one might mourn a lost loved one. Things have changed. Really, really changed. The first time I’d felt real uncertainty – that is, feeling suffocated by an all-consuming sense of helplessness was when I was just starting the 6th grade, I was far too young to understand what I was losing right in front of me.
I remember when there use to be five of us. I would get up every morning to sound of him whistling and the smell of sweet buttery pancakes in the air. I’d get up and walk into the kitchen to see him frying pancakes and whistling a familiar song, unaware of my presence. I would sneak up around him and steal one of those soft pieces of heaven stacked on the plate. He would give me one of his famous smiles and a pat on the head. We would talk about how I saved the world from an evil monster made out of dreaded broccoli by using my super strength to fling it into space, and then he would explain to me how it was only a dream and that monsters are not real. I would be reassured, and we would laugh it off. Those stolen moments with him were mine, and only for me. Same routine every day until I was 12, then one morning I woke up to nothing. There was no whistling. There was no smell of pancakes. There was no one there to listen to me talk about my dreams. There was no one there to convince me for the day that monsters did not exist.
I remember when I use to come home from school crying because a classmate made fun of me. He would always be there to make me feel better. He would sit me down on my bed and kneel down in front of me and tell me the same old story. This story was about a very special girl who did not fit in and could not understand why. Her father, a wizard, would look into her future and see her surrounded by people who love her and accept her unconditionally. He saw her beautiful and strong, brave and courageous, humble, and kind. He reassured her that sure things are tough now but eventually, things get better. She would ask how he knew such things and he would respond with, “I’m your dad, and us dads, we know these things.” And so she grew, she got older and she met new people. She met village folk, dukes and nobles, and creatures of all races. She gained friends and she lost some, but through it all the same four people stood by her through everything, she was surrounded by people who love her.
Every time I would hear that story, I would fill up with joy. I would go to school the next day with confidence and determined to make that day great. I wanted to be like that girl, brave and kind. He would give me hope of a better future. Whenever I was sad, he would hold me and tell me that everything was going to be okay. I almost believed him, until one afternoon, I got home, and he was not there. There was no one there to cry to. There was no one there to help me feel better. There was no one there to sit me down and tell me a story. There was no one there to reassure me of a better tomorrow.
I remember when he used to bring our family together at the dinner table. He would ask my sister and me about our day, and how we felt. My sister would always say it was great and that school was fun but I on the other hand was always a different story. He taught me to express myself and not be afraid of what other people have to say so I was not afraid. I told him everything; how I told a classmate I didn’t like him because he wouldn’t share his toys, I told the teacher she was mean because she didn’t let me teach the class and how I told the lunch lady that I didn’t like the pizza so if she could make better food the next day. He would always laugh at what I had to say and told me I was part of the light in his soul; I never understood what that meant. I was too young to get it. Once my stories were over, we would eat dinner and talk about the next day and what we want from it. This was a tradition, something we did every dinner until one night he just was not there. There was no one to bring us together at the dinner table. There was no one to ask me how my day was and how it made me feel. There was no one to laugh at my stories and understand me. There was no one to say I was important.
I still dream of those days, when life seemed almost perfect when life seemed complete. I was too young to understand what happened; all I knew was that he was not there. As time passed by, I would think back and remember things differently. It wasn’t the whistling that woke me up every morning, it was the yelling. I would listen and listen to my parents going back and forth, over and over again. I would close my eyes and wait; I’d hear the whistle and know it was over. I’d come home crying after school because my classmate made fun of me, saying that my parents didn’t love each other. They would all say that their parents told them that my mom and dad are bad people and shouldn’t be together because of their fights in front of the school and their children. Well, they got what they wanted. I woke up one morning and he wasn’t there.
That day is when I started to doubt his love for me. The hurt, the fear; doesn’t go away. It’s there when my little sister gets sick and I think she’s going to die. It’s there when my boyfriend hasn’t texted me for hours and my first thought is that he’s been hurt or killed. I have a good life; I’m 21 years old, I have so many years left in me. But I don’t trust it, because I know happiness can be taken from you, just like that. Most of the time, I’m okay. I go to therapy. I have worked through my past. I have cried, screamed, and fought through the memories.
I see him sometimes but the thing that stings is that he still doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get the pain he caused my sister and me. He gets angry at me for bringing it up, so I stopped doing so. I’m polite and respectful. I take my sisters to see him, I do what is expected of me for my sisters. So, I have to hold it in me – that void in my heart from losing him. Losing my dad, again and again, all my life. I have learned to deal with that.
There is a part of me that will always be that little girl getting up in the morning hoping with her whole entire body that her father will be there whistling when she comes into the kitchen. What can I tell her when she walks in and sees no one there? Do I have the heart to tell her she’ll never really get him back, that she’ll be chasing his love for years until she just gives up? Should I warn her that him leaving her would open up a world of insecurities and self-hate? I’ll just sit her down and say, “Hey, he left and will never come back, taking the smell of sweet buttery pancakes with him”.
Through Michii's Eyes 