Father is what I fear the most. That title that hallows and worships at the same time. Father. The word that makes you god. Because child prays to you; for light and guidance. And to child, father is pathway to wisdom; to truth, and to organisation.
I fear father. I fear that I will answer father like the fathers that have come before me. The fathers I have feared. Not because they have wielded guns on their tongues. Or they forget too many times to water their seeds. Or that they feed fathering to dogs. I do not fear the scars they leave on mother. I do not fear the blood they draw from my skin as their eyes yell that I'm not enough. I don't fear those.
I fear being like them. I fear being the father that child will weep for. Because child is sacred. Do you not know that child is sacred? Do you not know that child is flesh and blood and soul and love? Do you not know that child loves to laugh? Does the sound of that magical laughter not send shivers down your spine??
Because I am child, I know the pain of father. I understand too that father loved, but did not love enough-- because he did not know how to. For too many things contended with father's love; his patriarchy, his ego, his pride, his walls, his emotions bottled up over the years that have putrefied and become venom.
Father will not give what father has not. Father did not teach me to cry; because father did not know crying was not weakness. Father did not hold my hand; because did not know love can be expressed through contact, and that the memory of touch can linger longer than screams. Father did not teach me the music of affection; because father is tone deaf to it.
Because my fathers break my heart, I will cry to this page today. Because my fathers act and react so irrationally sometimes, I pray desperately that the behaviour is not genetic. I pray desperately its not swimming through my veins. I pray my child does not receive it from me. Because child will suffer like I did. And it has to end sometime.
Because fathers sometimes forget that child is human. And emotionally abuse child because child has been forbidden to fight back. Because sometimes, fathers make me ashamed of fatherhood, and make me hate that I might grow up to be just like them..
Father is what I fear the most. Because all the money in the world can not atone for breaking the promise of fatherhood, the one you made the moment you released your seed in the fertile cave, let your offspring taste his first breath and all that cartilage and vulnerability is filling the room with new life, and new tears.. Because I've seen fathers break those promises too many times, in the lives of the people I love the most; I've seen fatherhood go wrong so many times, its become a norm... Because sometimes, I feel like fathers will never understand us; like we belong in a completely different, mutually unintelligible dispensation from theirs, and that same may happen with our children...
...and that same may happen with our children..
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