My father was my sun, my moon, my entire universe. He wasn’t just my dad; he was my hero, sculpted from the kind of unwavering support and boundless love that felt almost mythical. Everything good, everything I achieved, I attributed to him. He was the one who saw something in me no one else did, especially when it came to my dream.My dream was expensive. Absurd, even, by our modest means. Art school in another country, specializing in a niche that offered no guarantee of a return. Everyone scoffed. Uncles, aunts, even family friends, they all advised me to be sensible, to choose a path with a future. They meant well, I suppose, but their words felt like tiny pricks deflating my soul. But my father? He just looked at me, his eyes full of that familiar, fierce pride, and said, “We’ll make it happen.”
And he did. He sold the small plot of land he’d inherited from his father, the one he’d always planned to build a retirement home on. He poured his life savings, every last penny, into my tuition, my living expenses, my materials. He worked extra shifts, his hands growing rougher, his shoulders heavier, but his smile never faltered when I called home. “Go chase it,” he’d always say. “Don’t look back. Don’t worry about anything.” The weight of that love, that monumental sacrifice, was a constant thrum beneath my skin. It propelled me, drove me, made me swear I would make every single one of his sacrifices worth it. He gave up his future for mine.
My mother, though, was a different story. She was always… quiet. A shadow in the periphery of our bright, father-daughter bond. I remember her sitting by the window, staring out, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. When I’d excitedly share details of my latest project or my father’s encouragement, she’d just offer a tight, almost imperceptible smile. No words of praise, no genuine warmth. I interpreted it as resentment. She’s jealous of our bond, I’d tell myself. Jealous of the attention he gives me, jealous of the life he’s enabling me to live. Her silence felt like a constant, low-level disapproval, a damp chill on the vibrant warmth my father and I shared. I loved her, of course, but I couldn’t understand her. I blamed myself sometimes, for being the reason for her quiet suffering, for the wedge I felt growing between my parents.
A group of men taking a selfie | Source: Freepik
Years passed. I graduated, found success, carved out the life I’d dreamed of. My father was my biggest cheerleader, his eyes twinkling with unshed tears at every exhibition, every achievement. His sacrifices felt validated. My mother remained largely the same – faded, distant. Sometimes, I’d catch her looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher, a mixture of pride, yes, but also a profound, aching sadness that twisted my gut. I wish she could just be happy for me, for us, I’d think, pushing down the gnawing guilt.
Then, the phone call. My father was sick. Suddenly. Severely. The kind of sick that leaves no room for hope. I dropped everything and flew home. I wanted to be there, to thank him one last time for everything. To reassure him his sacrifice was not in vain. To hold his hand as he slipped away. During those final weeks, my mother moved through the house like a ghost, attending to him with a detached efficiency that still stung me. I focused on helping where I could, managing his affairs, going through old documents.
A woman on the phone | Source: Pexels
One afternoon, sorting through a dusty box in his study, a box he always kept locked, I found it. It wasn’t a letter, or a will, or even a diary. It was a folder. Inside, an old, faded legal document. A deed, dated years before I went to art school. It outlined the sale of a property. Not his inherited land. It was the deed for my mother’s family home. Her parents’ home. The house she grew up in, the one she’d inherited, the one she always talked about as her legacy, her safe haven, her dream of opening a small guesthouse there one day. It had been sold. The amount listed was staggering. More than enough to fund my entire education, my entire dream.
My blood ran cold. I flipped through the rest of the folder. Bank statements. Withdrawals. Deposits. A meticulous paper trail showing the staggering sum from the house sale being funnelled, slowly but surely, into an account. My student account. The account I used for tuition, for living. It wasn’t his land he sold. IT WAS NEVER HIS INHERITANCE.
A wave of nausea washed over me. ALL THE MONEY. The immense sacrifice I’d always believed came from him, his future, his hard-earned savings… it wasn’t his to give. It was hers. Every penny of it. My tuition, my dream, my success, was built on the ashes of her entire future.
A smiling woman holding her phone | Source: Midjourney
The quiet hum of my mother’s disapproval wasn’t disapproval at all. It was the sound of a woman being systematically stripped of her history, her dreams, her very identity, all while watching her daughter unknowingly benefit from her destruction. Her distant gaze, her hollow eyes, her profound sadness – it wasn’t resentment directed at me; it was the unbearable weight of living through the ultimate betrayal.
My father didn’t sacrifice for me. He sacrificed her. He didn’t give up his future; he stole hers and presented it to me as his own boundless love. He wasn’t my hero. He was a thief, an architect of quiet devastation. And I, his beloved daughter, became the living, breathing monument to my mother’s stolen life. I am the cost of his ‘love’.
A pregnant woman | Source: Pexels
And she, my silent, grieving mother, is the one who paid for it all. I look at her now, sitting by his bedside, holding his hand as he fades, and I see not a quiet, resentful woman, but a soul shattered by a monstrous act of emotional larceny. And I don’t know how I will ever live with what I’ve learned, with the truth of whose dreams I actually built my life upon.
