Growing up with an Emotionally Unavailable father

Not every absent father leaves home .

Some stay . They sit on the dinner table with you , pay your bills , bring what you asked for , and attend family gatherings with you.

But never really able to know you.

People often say childhood memories bring peace .

Maybe they do.

For me , they bring peace for a different reason . As a child , I didn’t understand emotional distance. I didn’t notice the silence , the lack of affection, or the things my father could never say. I simply lived.

It wasn’t childhood that hurt me — it was growing up. Because adulthood gave names to the feelings that I couldn’t explain as a child , and suddenly those peaceful memories carried a quiet ache , I had never noticed before.

My father forgetting things about me wasn’t unusual.

He would forget my official name. Sometimes he couldn’t remember which class i was studying in. It had become such a normal part of life that I stopped expecting him to know.

But there was one thing that always hurt more than the rest.

My birthday

I honestly don’t know if he ever wished me a happy birthday when I was little.

I can’t remember a single birthday where he hugged me , wished me , or made me feel like the day mattered to him.

As I grew older, unfortunately , these things catched my attention.

Every year, my birthday would begin like any other day for him. He would go about his routine as if nothing was different. Then someone in the family would casually remind him at the end of the day, “it’s her birthday today.”

Only then would he turn to me with a surprised innocent smile

“Oh,its your birthday today?”

There was never an apology. Never an explanation. Just a few lighthearted words, almost as if forgetting was something we were both supposed to laugh about.

And i did laugh

Not because it didn’t hurt, but because I had learned that laughing was easier than admitting how badly I wanted my own father to remember one day that mattered to me without being reminded.

My own uncles share a totally different bond with their daughters , and seeing them being so comfortable with their father , sharing every funny moment of their day , choosing them for emotional comfort leaves me feeling helpless because I can never be like them. And they will never want to be like me .

Photo by Liane Metzler on Unsplash

I didn’t realise how deeply a fathers emotional absence could affect a child until I was in fifth grade.

It was the day our annual results were announced and like every year my father came with me to school

.

When we reached my classroom, I found out that I had secured the first position in the entire section. (anyway not for the first time , I am a smart kid , LOL!) . The boy standing next to me had come second, and another girl had secured third.

I remember looking at my father waiting for his face to light up.

It didn’t

While the other 2 performers who were standing next to me were being lifted up in the arms of their father , laughing, smiling and getting patted on their backs, i stood there holding back my tears until my father called me to get back home because he was getting late for his work.

On the way home , I kept waiting for him to say something.

Maybe he was saving it for later, I told myself.

The entire ride passed in silence.

When we reached home he dropped me at the gate and left saying he had work to do.

I wasn’t even ready to give up hope.

I waited for the evening, convinced that when he returned , he would finally ask about my award , congratulate me, or simply tell me he was proud of me .

He never did.

That day I learned that achievements don’t always matter to people whose approval you crave the most.

I wasn’t heartbroken because I came first.

I was heartbroken because, for the first time I realized, no achievement of mine could make my father emotionally available.

A part of me is still hollow and crave for that love, since i grew up!

Out of which I made it my resolution to help others by being emotionally available for them because I know how bad it hurts….