The pearl writes...

Well, it was until my mum got born again and we joined a certain local church. Suddenly the scales on my eyes started falling off. I started noticing other families, functional families with both parents present. Once a friend asked me, “Why doesn’t your dad come to church with you?”. I was a child, in primary school but I suddenly felt ashamed. I had never had to confront my reality before. I had actually never thought of him as a necessity in my life. It had never bothered me that I ‘had no father’. Without a second thought I responded, “he died in a plane crash…” then went on and on about how small I was to actually feel the pain of losing him when my friend ashamedly muttered a “‘sorry, I didn’t know.” I was a child but I had finally found an escape in death. Escape from the shame of being from a single-family. I was too young and too naïve to think that one can easily escape their reality. Growing older would make me realise how deceived I was! I dreaded particularly moments whe

I do not understand how someone you have never met can affect your life so much. Someone who is a complete stranger. I mean, it makes sense to say that you bumped into someone and you cannot stop thinking about them, but to say you cannot stop thinking of a stranger, someone you have never met, someone whose name you do not know, then that’s absurd. But it’s actually not. Especially when this person is the reason for your existence. You know that he is a real person because you are a real person but that’s as far as it goes. That’s a reality you have to deal with every day and being the only reality that you have known from your childhood then it’s not such a hard reality to believe. It becomes a part of you. It’s normal. Or is it? It is  21 st June, another one of those mornings you wake up and every social media platform is full of pictures of a hero: everyone hailing their father for being a king, a provider, an awesome person…another one of those mornings you wake up and wonder