I HATE CHILDREN
Day.
Yes. I hate Children’s Day.
Well, well, well, here we are again.
There was a version of me that loved this day, loved the idea of visiting theme parks, sitting at home watching Invincible Iron Man on repeat.
Funny enough, somewhere between Tony Stark building a suit in a cave and the credits rolling, I decided I was going to be an engineer.
Because it looked like the most alive a person could be, building something, becoming someone.
I had no idea what the course load looked like. I just knew what it felt like to want something that badly.
May 27 marks two years since my dad left. And every Children’s Day since has been the same quiet reminder, you are no longer a child.
Life is beautiful, and brutal, and completely indifferent to your plans.
There is one constant that comes for all of us eventually: death.
We live knowing that. Most days, we ignore it. But certain days, this particular day, you can’t look away.
For the backbone of a household to leave his children on their own holiday, that is the universe’s way of being extremely clear. Kids, you’re no longer children.
I have used this pain to build. I am proud of that.
But no matter what I fill that hole with, it is still there. Bitter truth, it expands. You just get better at carrying it.
I am almost an engineer now. And I genuinely do not know how to feel about that.
Not because I don’t want it. But because the version of me that wanted it was chasing something specific, I wanted him to see it. I wanted to hand him that moment.
We had a deal. He couldn’t make my matriculation, so we said convocation or induction. We said we would find a way. And now the time is here, and the deal is broken in the worst possible way, and I keep thinking, maybe I should have read something shorter and finished earlier.
Given him less to wait for.
I know that’s not rational. But grief doesn’t negotiate with logic.
This statement feels hollow.
Now, it's not because engineering isn’t what I want, it is, but the person who made me want it more isn’t here to see me become it.
And I didn’t expect that to hit the way it does. I thought I was further along in this. I thought I had processed it.
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But with signout in my sights, I realise I haven’t processed anything, I have just been moving.
Come to find out, this is what losing him turned me into, someone who just moves.
I balance school, family, work, faith, all of it, all at once, because stopping feels dangerous.
Because I am the head now. The backbone. The one my mum calls when something is wrong. And there was a moment this year, for the first time in my entire life, when she called, and I could not deliver.
I could not show up the way I was supposed to. I have never felt that particular kind of weakness before. It doesn’t feel like failing. It feels like a betrayal of something I promised without ever saying it out loud.
People say your twenties are for taking risks. But every risk I take now doesn’t just land on me, it lands on my family. So I ask myself constantly, am I being responsible, or am I just afraid?
Is this wisdom, or has the weight finally made me smaller than I used to be?
Honestly, and I hate saying this out loud, there are days this year when I don’t know what I’m living for.
Not in a dark way, in a lost way, in a, I have been running so long I forgot where I was going kind of way.
Everything I do feels like work now. Even the things I chose. Even the dreams. They don’t feel like mine anymore, they feel like obligations I made to a version of myself that no longer exists.
I opened my gallery recently. Looking for a picture of us. Something I could hold onto, something with his face in it next to mine.
There wasn’t one.
I don’t know why I was surprised. We were always in the same room, never thinking to document it. You never think you need to until you do, and by then the room is empty.
It just hurts in a very specific, very quiet way, to love someone that much and have nothing to show for it except everything they left inside you.
What it did do was change how I move with my mum. I take the pictures now.
I am present in a way I wasn’t before. I don’t take the ordinary moments for granted because I know exactly what it feels like when they run out. That’s not the wisdom I wanted. But it’s wisdom I have.
I know this is a phase. I know I will come out of it, I think.
But I am sitting inside it right now, and I am not going to pretend it isn’t heavy.
I am not the child who watched Iron Man anymore. I am not sure yet who I am.
I am somewhere in the middle of becoming something, carrying people I love, finishing something I started for a man who isn’t here to see the finish line.
And this day, every year, is the one day I cannot outrun any of that.
So yes. I hate Children’s Day. I hate it because it is the one day life gets completely honest with me. I am still learning how to be okay with that.
Happy Children’s Day.
Happy Second Year, Dad.
