My Father Told Me I Wasn’t Special

Have you ever seen those movies when a parent stoops down to their child to tell them? You are special. Well, that wasn’t what it was like for me

It wasn’t that my father did not love me — oh, quite the contrary. But to understand where this particular sentiment comes from, it is important to look back into his life.

My father was born in a small town in a small home. And within this setting, he had three stepmothers and ten half-siblings.

His mother left the house when he was younger with her lover, leaving him behind to fend for himself. And when he would describe it to me, he described it as being the family’s dog, having to wait for the scraps and dragging it to the quiet corner to not have it taken off him.

As soon as he was old enough to work, at 10, he began working at a bricklaying factory and saved everything, knowing that when the opportunity came, he would be able to escape his reality.

At the age of 13, all his money was stolen.

And his solution was to start saving once more. He crafted a removable brick wall where he kept his savings and embarked on the saving process anew.

At 17, an opportunity arose that he had not envisioned — to go abroad. On the trip, he admitted being terrified of being sent back because he had lied that he had someone to visit when he had no one to visit. He’d spent everything to get there, and if he were sent back, he would not know what to do with himself.

At 17, in a foreign country, my father became homeless. He’d known how to sing and play the guitar and started busking and saved up his coins to get a motel and a warm bath.

On those days when he had enough to get a motel, he would align them with the job interview days, where he would be presentable to the prospective employer.

When he got the job as a cleaner, he started working and saving until he met a woman who he loved: my mother. They struggled to make ends meet until they’d saved enough to buy a taxi.

My father went on to own his house, and we had a comfortable life. Eventually, my father had enough and began sending money to his father and his siblings, who were still relatively poor. My mother would query why he did this so religiously, and he would say that it wasn’t their fault they were still in poverty.

And so, in a way, my father believed he got this far because he wasn’t special. He’d internalised and justified his childhood as the reason he’d gotten this far. He’d never believed he was special, which, in turn, made him hardworking, giving us the life we have now. So, you see, it was his way of protecting me. In a way, he knew because he’d understood that not being special does not equate to not being the best or better. It just meant having to work harder to get ahead.