I am 31, and my dad turned 54 this year. He had me when he was just 23 years old. I was born in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, and he came from a small village in Punjab.
He is a self-made man who struggled all his life to give his children a better future. No one from our village ever went to school. He was the first to get a decent education, and he did so on his own.
He was the eldest of eight siblings. Throughout his childhood and adulthood, he was busy raising his father’s kids, and when they grew up, he got married at a young age. Since then, he has been raising his own children.
He worked hard all his life to make ends meet. We are five siblings, and he was responsible for educating all of us, feeding us, and managing the household with a limited income and no family support.
My father was strict from the start.
He told me to work much harder than other kids my age, fearing that if I didn’t, I might end up married young, like all the other girls in the family, unable to become independent.
He pressured me throughout my childhood to be at the top of my class. I kept studying without any help or supervision because this was the sole purpose of my life. Finally, when I got into medical school, he felt relieved.
I had differences with my father all my life. I was a city child, and he had spent all his life in a village. Whenever I expressed myself, he couldn’t understand me.
He had old ideas, and I was a rebellious child.
We argued every day about everything. I criticized him often, and he did the same to me.
Sometimes I feel as if the story repeated itself. As the eldest, I was responsible for taking care of my very young siblings, just as he had done in his past.
I became a doctor and eventually settled in life. At least my father no longer has to worry about my future. I felt much anger toward him all my life. I was the kind of child who was impatient and questioned everything. Sometimes I got answers, and at other times I didn’t.
Over the past few years, my father’s personality has softened, and I’ve grown into a highly independent and self-reliant person. My siblings have grown up too, and my father is no longer strict.
I left that immaturity behind, or maybe my hectic routine and the busy life of medicine made me forget to argue with him, and he began accepting me for who I am. My father stopped scolding me, and I stopped criticizing him.
Maybe he was happy that I was no longer at risk of ending up in a miserable life.
I think, over time, I started forgiving him for everything he couldn’t do for me—for the times when he was unable to express his love, for the times when he couldn’t fulfill my innocent wishes, for the years he argued with me over small things.
For years, I cried because of him.
Because now I see him in myself. When I look in the mirror, I notice that the wrinkles around the outer corners of my eyes when I smile are the same as my father’s.
I know that both of us are highly sensitive and experience extreme emotions. Sometimes, we are extremely sad, and other times we are the liveliest people in the room. Now I understand where this emotional dysregulation came from.
Both of us have suffered a lot in life in the hope of finding a better future, trying not to end up like the rest of our extended family.
Both of us were responsible for our younger siblings. Both of us had no one to share our fears and feelings with. Both of us felt like we were in a race all our lives. Neither of us could relax and enjoy life because we were never privileged enough to pause and live in the moment.
Both of us lost our liveliness along the way and grew old much earlier than others our age. We have both been givers all our lives, completely ignoring ourselves. We both worked with extreme sincerity in our respective jobs. And we both have the capacity to love others unconditionally.
Over time, I’ve realized that both of us were right in our own ways. I’ve forgiven him for the things I once blamed him for. Now I understand that he had no control over what he couldn’t do. He did the best he could at the time.
His inner child, like mine, had been wounded.
He never received the attention and love he deserved from anyone. He has always been lonely, like me. We have both tried to make everyone around us happier and have been kind to others. We are both forgiving and have never wronged anyone.
Neither of us was interested in making a lot of money or had grand desires. We both felt content and thankful for the little pleasures of life. We share the same eye for beauty in everyone around us. We can’t judge others and have suffered a lot because of this approach.
Now I know that I have been exactly like my father.
I am his reflection, even though I’ve been fighting myself all my life to avoid being like him.
The only difference is that he is a man, and I am a woman. We are two faces of the same coin. Maybe our lives are different in many ways, yet I’ve learned all the good qualities from him.
Sometimes I wish I could hug him and tell him he never deserved to suffer this much. He deserved to be happy. I wish he hadn’t been burdened with the weight of the world on his fragile shoulders. I realize now why he couldn’t understand me: he had felt unheard and unseen all his life.
I wish he could have played freely in the lush green fields of his village like any other child.
I wish he had never had to take care of so many young siblings when he was just a kid. I wish he had enjoyed his adulthood to the fullest, like other boys, and hadn’t had to work so many jobs just to make ends meet. I wish he could go back to his childhood and fill in the missing pieces.
Damane Zehra is a radiation oncology resident in Pakistan.
