For most people, their worst childhood memories are of playground scuffles or getting in trouble. Not for me though, my earliest memories are of me finding out about my dad’s affair and his smoking addiction. Growing up, I knew there was something broken about my family. My home was always one full of incessant fighting, friction and worry. I didn’t realize how bad it was until everything was suddenly ripped out from underneath me.
It all started when I was 8-years old. I was bright for my age, yet my dad believed me naive enough to think that she was just a friend. I only remember bits and pieces from the day he took me to a woman’s house behind my mom’s back. I recall sitting on a couch, confused and perplexed, but I was smart enough to notice that my dad’s and her interactions seemed anything but friendly. For the longest time, I thought that day was just a dream, a mere figment of my imagination. Or maybe that’s what I forced myself to believe. It wasn’t until I started noticing the phone calls and read the texts from a contact named ‘Work’ on my dad’s phone that my suspicions were confirmed, he was indisputably having an affair. As the years went by, my siblings too became aware of our dad’s infidelity. It was the elephant in the room, the omnipresent thing we could never bring ourselves to discuss.
To make things worse, at the age of 10, I caught my dad smoking. The eerie darkness of that night will never escape my memory. I explicitly remember being awoken by the sound of the front door closing. Looking out of the window, I spotted my dad bringing a cigarette up to his lips. I remember just standing there, watching him as the hazy O-rings he exhaled floated upwards and dissipated in the air. That’s when everything made so much more sense, from his blazing red eyes to the sweet and musty aroma of citrus and pine that always indulged him, he was a smoker. My dad was an addict that couldn’t put the cigarettes down for the love of his kids. He didn’t know that I saw him that night so, like everything else, I kept it a secret. By that point in my life, I thought it couldn’t get any worse, that there was no other way my dad could disappoint me. Boy was I wrong.
The inevitable came when I was 12-years-old. My parents sat my siblings and me down and that’s when my dad uttered the four words that shattered my world, “We’re getting a divorce”. I still remember looking into his eyes and not seeing an ounce of guilt or shame. Shame that he was leaving his four children behind for his mistress. I guess a part of me always mentally prepared myself for that day but that doesn’t mean it hurt any less. I wanted to yell, kick, scream or punch something, but I couldn’t move a muscle. Feeling suffocated and congested, I helplessly stood there with a lump in my throat. It wasn’t until I saw my mom silently crying that a single tear rolled down my cheek, and just like that, the floodgates opened.
That same day, through the closed door of my room, came raised voices. I remember trying to distract my 5-year-old brother from the endless shouting, however, the yelling only got louder. As my parents’ voices reverberated throughout the whole house, my siblings and I got all the details of my dad’s affair that we never wanted to know, the who, what, where and when. I can still recall hearing the sound of glass shattering followed by the door shutting. That very night, wrapped in my blanket and cocooned by the protective buffer of the deafening silence, I fell asleep knowing that things would never be the same again.
It’s been years since my parent’s divorce and honestly, I don’t even remember the last time my dad and I exchanged the words ‘I love you’ or the last time he enveloped me in a warm hug. Yes, it hurts, but at some point in my life, I realized that a daughter shouldn’t have to beg her father for a relationship. So, I decided to put as much effort into contacting him as he does with me, that’s why we don’t talk as much anymore. It’s quite ironic how the man that gave me life, also ruined me, simply by refusing to give a damn. I guess my strained relationship with my dad and having grown up watching my parent’s marriage fall apart taught me to create walls and keep myself emotionally guarded. But at the same time, it also forced me to grow up faster and into a stronger, more resilient and independent woman.