I remember loving art as a child and how I desperately wanted to become an artist in my teenage years. A dream that began a could war between myself and my parents.
They were constantly bashing my dreams telling me that being an artist is like being a beggar on the street, nobody pays you any attention. But I never listened. I rallied against them until they finally gave in and support my dreams to failure.
After five years of being an artist with nothing to show for it, I decided to quit and get a job in a packaging company. A few years after, I got married to a beautiful girl named Sophie from Ireland and together we gave birth to Mark.
Life was going great, simple but great until my little boy, Mark, started to grow up. He was a spitting image of me, he loved hamburgers, ice cream, pizzas, donuts, and pickles, just like me. But what we had most in common was our love for art.
At age four Mark started drawing, and before he clocked ten, he was an art expert, making paintings that may someday rival my own. I was very proud of him because he was living a dream that I could not complete and I was fully ready to support him. Until he turned fifteen.
At the age of fifteen Mark started showing some teenage rebellion, he neglected my rules, threw unapproved parties in my home, and completely disrespected his mother. But what broke my heart the most was that he disrespected art. He tossed every painting he had ever made into the dust bin and set most of them ablaze. When I reprimanded him, he called art stupid and a complete waste of time.
At the age of sixteen, he acquired a new hobby, music. Every day he would be with his headphones nodding his head while reciting words that couldn't even be heard by the deaf. When I asked him about it, he said it was rap and he loved it. I ignored him and let him be until I started seeing him hanging out with some other friends of his, those he called rappers. They looked like thugs and there was no way I would let him live his life as a thug.
So, I blocked him off, every single step of the way, I stopped him from visiting his friends and I seized his phone whenever I saw him nodding off to the beat of his headphones. He began to hate me but I didn't care, because if he was not going to become an artist, he most definitely is not becoming a thug.
I continued to cut him off, until one day we clashed in an argument, about me killing his dreams, he called me a bad father and an irresponsible one at that. I was enraged and in denial, so I hit him, not once, not twice... I hit him...
Now, I keep wondering why I hit him, why I didn't just support and help him find a better means of achieving his goal, I ask myself why I imposed my dreams on him at a very young age and expected him to see it true without following his one dreams. I ask myself why I didn't just give up on art as my parents told me to because If I had done that at least he wouldn't have run away, he wouldn't have ignored my calls, he wouldn't have joined those thugs, and he would still be here with me, alive.
I'm sorry guys,I'm not very good with Spanish,so, I can't translate when I'm not sure it's correct
