Where?

When I was small, my father was always away, more away than home. He was in the army, his workplace always changes location, he could be at one place now, next month: who knows. When I got old enough to notice that a lot of the kids in our neighborhood had both of their parents at home, I didn't even ask any of mine why my father had to leave at all. I mean, I never knew anything different. Before even he and my mother met, he was always leaving. He never stayed long enough to make us get used to his presence. It's not like something so abrupt that you have to question. By the time my father stopped leaving, our eldest, who's only 3 years older than I am, already had a girlfriend. Not long after that, he got her pregnant. In other words, we never had practice having a stranger for a father around. Almost all physical, mental or whatever transformations that happen to a person already happened to us, especially to me and to my two older siblings. Then, the riot began. 

My siblings and I never got a chance to really know our father, and I'm quite sure my father didn't really know us at all either. Although we always knew he got mad easily, we never seem to get accustomed to his temper. It was at this point of my life when I really hated my father, right to the core of my being. 

I never told my father that I loved him. I couldn't even do the same thing that I could do to my mother, like a cuddle, or anything that could make someone think they are loved. Never could I even so much as attempt to put a hand on him and somehow wish that he'd know how important he was to me. The thing is, I could never tell him I love him because I didn't know how he would react. And to a kid, being unsure is never okay, so you stay in the corner.

Without him knowing, I learned to do things that might have made him happy. At some point, his opinion was all that mattered to me. 

I was in highschool, sibling fights occur so frequently at home then that I don't even remember now what it was that time we quarelled about or which sibling I quarelled against... all I remember is that my father, angered by our fight, grabbed a handful of my hair and slapped me. Hard. He only went for me, my other sibling got away with it. He was preparing for his retirement by this time, so this was also the time when he was at home more than usual. The time that I took as a chance to do things he might be proud of me doing. But that slap made me regret all of my prayers to God to make my father stop leaving. I started wishing he was anywhere else but home. It was at this time when I wished I had a different father. I know that my father didn't take too much from the slap. That's what he always did to punish us, but to me it was so personal, so disheartening, so wrong for him to do something to make me feel hatred towards him when what I wanted so much was for him to be proud of me.

It's true that you have to love someone before you hate them. I must have loved my father so much that even after all these years, the hatred still seems so in to now, real.

That is something I don't want my family - if I ever have one - to have. I want to be there for my children every step of the way. I want to feel their fears, hear their thoughts and make them say those sincere words I could never tell my own parents. This way, I would know when they hate me. This way, they can hate me all they want, but at least they know they matter.

Sure, we all have the right to go where we want to go. But the people around that decision is what makes all the difference. Maybe by the time you realize you're not where you're supposed to be, you already missed everything. 

Right now I'm writing and all I want more than anything in the world is to be at a place where all the people that I care about, who care about me, are nearby.