The calluses on his hands from trying. He taught me how to stand my ground. He taught me how to keep my mouth shut when words would only make it worse.
How to survive a world that didn't ask if I was ready. But still, late at night I wondered, whose walk was I walking in? Whose temper lived behind my ribs? Which man had handed me this face like an unfinished sentence? Then adulthood came. And with this the kind of truth that doesn't knock.
It just sits down across it and waits. Neither of them. Not the man spoken softly.
Not the man spoken harshly. Not the man I defended in my head. Not the man I blamed in my chest.
I stared at that revolution like it owed me something. Like clarity would come with an apology. Like a mother's silence would finally explain itself.
I asked myself the dangerous questions. Why lie? Why let a boy grow up reaching for ghosts? Why build a story knowing it would collapse? But the older I got, the quieter those questions became. Because somewhere between anger and understanding, I realized something no DNA test could hand me.
Name doesn't raise a child. Bloodline doesn't decide character. Absence doesn't get to define presence.
I know who I am. I know the man I became, despite the missing chapter. Despite the blurred ink where truth should have been.
I'm not unfinished. I'm not searching anymore. I don't need a stranger's name to validate my spine.
I am the sum of my choices. The weight of my resilience. The proof that you can be fatherless and still become whole.
So if you ask me now who my father is, I'll tell you the truth. It doesn't fucking matter. Because I know who I am.
And no name in the world can change that. I'm sorry. I cannot stop.
