Your heart breaks today: part 3

Instinctively, you turn to face the television. And for a second, time seems to vanish as you feel some sort of peace again. But then. As if something is pulling you back to focus. Someone is asking you to join the present.

You turn to your son. As he spits out at you, “Why did you have us if you don’t even care?”, your mind pulls a blank as you try to find any sort of answer, countless images of how much effort you’re doing for everyone else flood your brain, but you are speechless. “I don’t understand how you could even call yourself a father. You were never there for us. We never needed you.”

The images of the sacrifices you have been doing over the years flash before your eyes. And you see how much effort you have put into this family. This particular family everyone is accusing you of abandoning. The countless nights you have spent slaving over your work so that you can provide what they need. a roof over their head. Food on the table. But these ungrateful people never see what you have done.

*author note: what the narrator fails to see is that, in fact, his children never wanted him to slave over his work. they wanted… him”

“Go To you…” You start seeing red as you snap these words, but he cuts you off. “Yeah, I know, I am leaving, do whatever you guys want. It’s not like you even care we exist.”.

Your heart breaks, just a little more. You can never figure out what you are doing wrong. But whatever you seem to be doing. it’s falling on deaf ears. You spend your sweat and blood to take care of everyone, and all you get is ungratefulness. Ungrateful kids who seem to hate your guts, and an ungrateful wife who promised to be by your side, but is now egging your kids against you.

Your son leaves the room, as you feel the coldness engulf you. The burning in your throat has reached its maximum, and you feel your eyes well up.

Your heart breaks today, just a little bit more, as it has been doing for the past three decades, and you don’t know what you have been doing wrong or how to fix it. And most of all, you don’t know how much more you can take.

At that moment, you brush your thoughts off as you hear the sound of the newscaster tugging at your attention. And you turn back to face the television letting the outside world fall back out of focus.