My parents loved each other. I never noticed how apart my parents were as a child. I thought it was normal for my mom to only be home for week in a month because she’s travelling for “business”. My dad raised me for the majority of my life. I remember my mom never being there for birthday, to take me to school or pick me up,to hug me when I cried or cuddle me when I was sick. Before the age of 9 if you asked me what my mom did for work I genuinely couldn’t tell you. But my dad was my best friend until he wasn’t.

I hate when parents say “I stayed in the marriage for my kids”. We genuinely never asked you to. Divorce is hard on kids but so is living with two parents who hate each other’s guts. As a kid you can feel the distance but you eventually learn to pretend it doesn’t exist.

My dad cheated on my mom very early into their relationship,multiple times actually. But because she loved him she stayed and gave him 6 kids. She convinced herself he had changed his ways and low-key he had but now she was cheating and even worse, she was in love. My dad was unemployed and mostly did side quests for work, my mom was the breadwinner so naturally he was a very insecure man. Now im not saying that justifies how he decides to handle his insecurity but I think it played part. Also my mom like feeling needed so she only dated men who relied on her financially. My mom had taken my one sister and I to meet “her boss” who was also the man she loved in kzn for the December holiday in 2017. I guess she thought because we were young we wouldn’t understand what was happening but we did. We knew that a strange man who is not my father was being overly friendly with my mom. Later when we got back home, my dad would take us on these “walks” were he would interrogat us about this man and because we were kids ,we told home everything.

One faithful day on the 30th of October in 2018, my family underwent drastic changes. According to my dad what happened that day was that my mom served him divorce papers and basically admitted to her affair while we were at school. So when she went to the garage to put her stuff in her car to go to work, he followed her, picked up the 4 pound hammer in the tool box my mom bought for him and he swung. He hit her 4 times on her skull and broke her pinky finger. He later says he felt guilt and took her to the hospital but not before hiding the hammer, cleaning the blood in the garage and taking a shower.

Honestly I couldn’t believe it when I heard it the first time from my uncle when my siblings and I came back from school. It’s important to know that my 9th birthday was just 3 days before this. So when my uncle sat at my parents dinner table and joked that we were going on vacation while holding both my parents phones in his one hand, part of us wanted to believe him but something felt awfully wrong. He then followed by saying “your mom is in hospital and your dad is in jail”, then showing us the blood splatter on the cars and the back seat of my moms car that he took her to hospital with, like hello who says bad news like that. Not to mention that when we were taken to see our mom in hospital, we were made to sit in the blood covered car with a sheet on the seats. Mind you my parents had 3 other cars we could’ve used. I can’t tell you what happens for the rest of that year besides constantly being pulled out of school, seeing my mom tied to machines in that cold icu room, nearly being kidnapped by my dads side of the family, seeing my moms brother abuse my mom’s assets while she was in hospital, writing letters for my mom so I can send them to her in hospital, writing letters for my dad in prison ,being followed by strange men and my mom moving us in with the man she had an affair with.

For many years she lied about the affair because at the time we didn’t know that, that was the reason he hit her. She told us it was because we told our dad about that December we spent with her and that man. She made it seem like it was our fault, like we almost got our mom killed because we couldn’t keep her secret. I think that’s were most of my depression began. We were forced to adapt to a life we never knew because that very next year we were taken to like with my moms lover  in kzn while she stayed in joburg and the year after that she married him. My step dad.

I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t so instead I hated myself, I hated my mom and most of all I hated my dad. He spent the next 7 years in prison and we played happy family in a home built on lies. Somewhere in between those 7 years i forgave my dad, found out the truths kept from us by my parents, went through severe depression and failed therapy and somehow learned to love my broken family.

This is awful to say but I’m grateful everything happened, because i know my mom now, im closer to her than ever before, she’s there to hug me when I cry and cuddle me when I’m sick.

I met a boy. Who’s not perfect in a lot of ways. Some might say we are bad for each other because in the 2 months I’ve known him I think I’ve cried more than I have my entire teenage life. But he’s gentle with his touch and sweet with his words. He is forgiving, reassuring and patient. He has shown persistence and a willingness to keep trying no matter how much it hurts to do so. He turns the dissonance in my head to music only I can hear. He’s the type of love that makes me think “this time it’s different”, like riding a bike without training wheels for the first time and hoping you won’t fall except he’s the one jogging behind me to make sure I’m steady. God knows how much I love him. How much I want to treat him right, pick him up when he falls, to be his shoulder to cry on and the one to cheer him up when he’s down.

Someone once said ‘so much of my heart belongs to you ,I can’t even call it mine’ or something along those lines. To think love is a universal feeling we as people get to experience many times in our lives. Each one better than the last, stronger even. I’d like to believe that our past experiences with love are the reason why people find soulmates. That we can say “Ive found the one” because we would know if it wasn’t. Now im not saying that he is my soulmate but he feels pretty close to one.

I hold on to those memories like my life depends on it because God knows I would give anything to be 6 years old and putting my fallen teeth in my dad's shoes knowing that ‘the tooth fairy’ would replace it with money the next day.

He’s 50 something now and I haven’t had a proper conversation with him in 8 years. I used to hate him for leaving us and for the longest time I held onto a grudge till every laugh or attempt at moving on felt suffocating. I often joke about his absence to hide the pain and sometimes I tell people how fathers are overrated but deep down I miss my dad. I miss having someone to show My meaningless achievements to, someone to sing ‘this little light of mine’ with, someone who did all my school project for me and someone to make father's day cards for. My dad was at some point of my life, my hero and I would hate it if he ever died without me telling him that I forgive him for leaving.

Because I love you, I will limit my respect for you. I will constantly remind you that im your elder, I am deserving of the respect I will never show you. Because I love you my trust for you is conditional, so yes I will trust you with my life but I won’t trust you with constantly being in it. I won’t trust you with my truth or lies, I won’t trust you with my stuff even if you plead and cry. Because I love you I will emotionally blackmail you, you deserve to feel bad for me because it’s more easier to manipulate you when your empathy is directed towards me. Because I love you ,I will keep secrets from you. I will not bother myself with how that affects you because remember I don’t trust you. Because I love you lies will come easy to me, in my head im shielding you from the pain but in yours im causing it. I never win with you, you’re the victim but I’m also fighting for that role so because I love you I will hurt you so that you love me and because I love you I will dish out your insecurities and fears and somehow find a way to make it about me only because you’re smart enough to understand but also because I love you enough to make you care.