Right after that, she walked out of the clinic and completely out of my world. There was zero support provided, neither money nor love.
We got absolutely nothing—no phone calls, no greeting cards, no happy birthdays. It was just an empty quiet that spanned across the decades like a massive barrier we couldn’t get over. At times, that quiet felt more deafening than a screaming match would have been.
My dad brought me up all by himself. Through every sickness, every bruised leg, every midnight trip to the grocery store because I forgot to buy supplies for a class assignment, he was always right there.
He made the meals, washed the house, washed my clothes, and paid the electric bills, even during times the utility business warned they would cut our power. And he never, not even for a second, whined about it.
The thing that shocked me the most was how he never spoke poorly of her. Not even casually. Not even on days when he felt exhausted, anxious, or completely buried in work.
Around the age of seven, I questioned him about my mother’s appearance. He did not act weird or attempt to switch the topic. Rather, he took a tiny, faded picture from his bedside table and passed it to me gently.
