I was afraid of my father  

Content Disclaimer:

This piece includes strong language and discussions of family trauma, emotional harm, and domestic violence. Reader discretion is advised.

I grew up afraid of my father. Terrified. I don’t really remember when I first learned to fear him, but I vividly remember being a young child, about 5 or 6 years old and being with my mother who was very familiar to me and a safe space, a friend even and she was telling me something about my father, but he was a strange concept to me. He registered unfamiliar.

This made me curious. Who is this ‘strange’ man who comes to our home every night and eats with us, says a few words over the news, says goodnight to us, wakes us up in the morning, stirs his tea in a very unique way and then goes off to work ? Like who actually is he ? 

To be clear, my father was a very present in our lives, but as I later came to learn, like many of his African peers, he was very emotionally closed off. 

As a curious child, I attempted to get close to him. To poke the outside and get a feel of what’s inside. I don’t remember the exact details of what I did or what happened, but I remember being met with unwelcomeness. Objection. A cold sense of ‘go away’. Don’t do that. Don’t come close. When I think about it now, I think it meant,

“I don’t want you to see me. I don’t want you to see the ‘bad’ parts of me I keep hidden away that I am ashamed of.”

Back then, however, it felt like ‘go away’. You are not worthy of my time. Of my attention. Of my affection. You’re not worthy of my laughter or my jokes. Worthy of my hugs. You’re an annoyance. A little annoying child who wants affection all the time. It felt like, “You are unwanted”.
Even as I write this, I struggle to fight the shame that I have carried for so long in my 28-year sojourn on this beautiful blue rock we call home. I still feel like that needy, black, ashy, crusty child wondering why he feels these feelings when his father has communicated that he shouldn’t be feeling them. I desperately want this piece to be a carthatic release that frees me from the need for affection. Am I gay ? Is it gay to want a hug from your father ? Fellas ?

As if it wasn’t enough to be cold and closed off, I remember my father as a very angry man. Red hot. Hostile. Wearing his temper on his sleeve, ready to unleash it on any member of the household who dares fucks up. Fuck around and Find Out was the theme of the home. You know what makes a really shitty floor for a home ? Eggshells. When you have to tiptoe around your naturally occurring emotions. To bend and shape your personality so that you don’t make the grave mistake of pissing off your father. It does things to you. It fucks with you. While others are just doing, just living, you’re calculating. Measuring. What you say. How you feel. You’re afraid. Afraid that you’ll get angry and say a hurtful thing or feel sad and break down when you’re needed to be strong get shit done.

So what do you do ?

You innovate. It’s what you do. You’re not giving up. You’re going to win. You’re destined to win.

You’re smart and you secretly know it. But you can’t show it too boldly. It attracts expectations. And when you don’t meet those, you disappoint people. Or you get challenged to prove it, and when you can’t the laughter and ridicule absolutely floors you, and there’s no one to pick you up. Definitely not your dad. 

It’s also your job to make sure that people are happy ? It’s your job to keep your mum … not sad. Not disappointed. To keep her happy and peppy. She already has to deal with a red hot husband. She keeps warning you whenever you’re out of line not to make her tell your father. So don’t be another man from that bloody bloodline who builds her hopes up and disappoints her. And never be angry. We don’t need another one of those. We’ve seen what that does to other people. How it feels to be on the receiving end of that. How it shatters self esteem to pieces when your father, shouty red hot and with precise rudeness, deconstructs your stupid childish mind as a form of punishment for dropping a plate after he warned you to be more careful with it.

So you learn that some of your emotions are wrong. Bad. In fact, some of them are evil Yes, your anger is evil. 

How dare you feel angry when you could simply choose to just be a happy person ? Just smile. So you train yourself to shelve your anger away. To just become a happy person. A cheerful person. You learn to become funny. It makes people laugh and laughter is such a wonderful to share and experience. 

It also gets the girls, even when you’re broke as fuck and dark skin before being tall, dark and handsome became popular. Obviously, you can’t fully shelve away all the anger, so you only allow it to come out once you’ve really thought about it and given the situation a chance. No, many chances for alternative resolution. You’re a happy, peaceful guy. You can just brush that comment off. When a teacher unfairly punishes you, you channel the anger into determination. If he was so smart, why is he a teacher ? Why isn’t he rich ? You’ll show him.

So what does this little bit of emotional innovation do to me ? It breeds shame. As I’ve come to learn through amazing friends and therapy, all our emotions are valid and we should feel them fully. We should allow them in our body. What we choose to do as a result of those emotions, is what is up for judgement. That, dear friends, is a choice. But the emotions themselves are not. We are not and can not be in control of our emotions. So when you take your anger, your fear, your sadness, your jealousy and you make it into a bad evil thing that should not exist, your ✨subconscious✨ registers that as a rejection of self and that my dear friends breeds deep deep shame. Who woulda thought ?

Sadness was also not allowed. How can you be sad when your parents have given you everything ? When they have sacrificed and grinded from poverty and now you have everything, unlike some other people. You need to grateful. Cheerful. Always.

My father was physically violent towards my mum a couple of times. I never actually saw him hit her, but I was sleeping in an adjacent room when he threw a plate of food at her for reasons I do not clearly recall. I was sleeping in an adjacent room, passed out from a bender, when he splashed a cup of coffee at her for a disagreement over an international trip she wanted us to go on. This dude was angry. Yet, talking to some people about my father, they saw him as a just a chill dude. I saw him as the guy who would make our househelps (aunties) shed tears every morning worried about what he was going to say. The guy who would yell at his driver in front of us for being timid on the road. Yell at me for small mistakes I made as a kid. Was I wrong ? Was he actually just a chill dude or was he a skillful narc hiding his true nature ?

My parent’s marriage thankfully split up when I was in uni and while I was living with my mum, I finally let my dad know what I thought of him after years of holding it in. The thing that did it was him hitting her again over an argument about his other family that my mum knew about but my sister and I didn’t. 

My angry outburst felt like that moment when Prince Zuko confronts his father, Fire Lord Ozai. I let him have it. But his response, angry and defensive did not bring the satisfaction I thought it would. It left me with more questions. What did I actually want from this man ? I had grinded through uni and ensured I broke free from his controlling ass by moving thousands of kms away to a different country and in a pretty good job. But still there was something missing even after I’d told him to fuck off. 

I just got off a call with him with him today. It was a very good call. He told me he’s proud of me. Proud of my current job and how I’m doing. He told me he sometimes takes credit from his friends for how I’m doing but he feels like I did it all myself. I didn’t. I did it precisely because he was my father. I did it to defy him. His cruel reign. I did it because he taught me the need for financial independence by saying cold hard No’s every time I asked for something that wasn’t “essential”. I did it to show him that I am him. That’s only part of the story though.

As I’ve come to find out in therapy, I also subconsciously did it to win his approval. We all love money, it’s a capitalist world. Maybe if I made all of it, he would finally open up to me and declare his undying love for his son. He’d finally hold me tight and hug me.

Pause lol

But yeah, maybe if I made a fuck ton of money, my father would finally show me that he loves me.

The hardest thing I’m coming to terms with right now, is that my fear of my father was a choice. Sure, I didn’t really have much of a choice as a kid than to comply and reacting the way I reacted was actually pretty fucking smart and got me here but also, I could have chosen to be a ‘bad kid’ and defiant and that was ok because I would have been true to myself. It’s learning that the bad parts of me are okay and that I am not a victim. Ngl, that first one is much harder to accept than the second one. I am still working on it. 
Ok so what do I want you to walk away from this bloody jumpy article with ? It’s to fully accept yourself the way you are. It’s hard. It fucking sucks sometimes. But nobody can really and truly love me more than I can love me, because nobody can know me more than I know me. And the best way for me to know me, is for me to fully accept myself the way I am. Warts and fine boy pimple. A work in Progress

By Karanja Mutahi