my father makes me miserable

My father makes me feel like drowning under the weight of misery.

No, really.

His voice echoes our house with demands.

He’s not home in the mornings to wake me up for school, nor is he home to hear about my day when I get back

Words of affirmation from him feel like a myth at this point.

My father is reckless. With no regard for the people who raised him

he left behind everything he knew, and everyone who loved him

He moved to a country full of strangers in hopeless pursuit.

chasing his dreams, dripping in hubris.

He left my mother and me when I was two.

My father has left my body marked with bruises I’ll never see

wounds that will never heal

and resentment that doesn’t fade.

My father has never once failed to show me his disappointment and disdain for the choices I’ve made, and the person I am.

and he is the best person I have ever known.

My father speaks so loudly, attempting to fight the injustices in this world.

He’s never home because he’s out building a better future for our family.

He hasn’t told me he’s proud of me once, because he knows I can be so much more.

My father is reckless because he knows he carries the weight of racism on his shoulders. He knows that if he stands by, he will be passed over. He is reckless because fortune favors the bold; the only thing ever handed to him was the courage to stand up for what’s right.

He left behind everything he knew, and everyone he loved, and it almost broke him. He went from East Asian values to a Western culture that was chomping at the bits to chew him up and spit him out.

His hopeless pursuit was a journey of rags to less dirty rags.

Chasing dreams dripping in hubris, my father who had a university degree stacked shelves and cut cabbages at 4 am every morning.

and he never thought himself too good for it.

He was a teacher in his homeland, respected by all.

He was spat at in New Zealand, reduced to nothing but an Indian accent to ridicule.

My father moved to the prisons.

he took abuse from the worst of criminals every day

My father did not complain once.

so how is it, that I possibly could?

My father gave up a safe life, even a happy one.

so that I could have a chance at a great one.

He has never let me pay a bill, never let the word hunger touch my mouth.

He made sure to leave hot water for me in the winters, even if that meant he would freeze.

My father makes me miserable, because how could I possibly ever repay him for what he’s done for me.

How can I despise him for being emotionally distant, when he gave everything he had for me to not face the struggles he did.

I have achieved many things in my life.

Traveled around the world collecting accolades and trophies that no longer fit on our shelves.

I’ve worked twice as hard as the people around me.

I’ve battled the disparity in my home life and the outside world.

I’ve wrestled with trying to find my own identity amidst two vastly different cultures.

I am the child of an immigrant and have experienced injustices that some people wouldn’t even dream of.

And through it all, I have prevailed, yet even through all of this

my father never told me he was proud of me,

but how could I ever resent him for it,

when I’ve never told him that I was proud of him.