I Carried His Silence Longer Than His Sins

They say time heals everything, but they never tell you what to do with the silence that time leaves behind.

For years, my father’s silence echoed louder than any words he could’ve spoken. It filled rooms, sat between us at dinner, and tucked me in at night with a weight heavier than any lullaby.

Growing up, I didn’t know what a father’s love was supposed to feel like. I only knew absence—his absence—despite him living in the same house. He was a presence that loomed, not one that embraced. He provided, yes, but love isn’t measured in electricity bills or school fees. It's measured in the small things: an arm around your shoulder, a glance that says "I see you", a word that says "I’m proud of you." I don’t remember having any of those.

I was ten when I stopped expecting him to say “I love you.”

I was fifteen when I stopped trying to make him proud.

And I was twenty-two when I realized I had spent my whole life trying to become the child he would finally look at with warmth.

But he never did.

He wasn’t cruel. At least, not in the way people usually think of cruelty. He didn’t hit me. He didn’t insult me. He was just... silent. Emotionally absent. And sometimes, that hurts more. Because when someone yells, you can fight back. But how do you fight a ghost who’s alive?

I remember once, on my twelfth birthday, I saved up courage like it was gold. I stood in front of him after school and said, “Did you know today is my birthday?”

He looked at me, blank, then nodded and said, “That’s nice,” before returning to the news channel blaring on TV. That night, I blew out candles alone.

I began carrying his silence like a second skin. I wore it in classrooms, relationships, and even in the mirror. I learned to be quiet when I needed to scream. I became emotionally fluent in distance. And with every year, I buried a piece of myself to stay close to a man who never reached back.

Years later, I tried to talk to him again—this time, as an adult. I sat across from him at a dusty old tea shop in the city where he spent most of his life working.

I said, “Why did you never talk to me?”

He blinked. Looked away. “I didn’t know how,” he whispered. “My father was the same.”

That was the moment I realized: my father wasn’t heartless.

He was broken.

A man made of generational wounds no one taught him to name, much less heal.

I cried that night—not for me, but for him. For the boy inside him who also waited for love and only received silence. And in that strange, painful clarity, I did something I never thought I could:

I forgave him.

But here's the truth no one tells you about forgiveness:

It doesn’t come wrapped in warmth and closure. Sometimes, it’s cold. Lonely. It doesn’t always end in hugs or reconciliation. My father and I never became close. He remained a stranger in my life, even as his hair grayed and his hands trembled. But I stopped blaming myself for it.

I stopped trying to fix what he never learned to build.

Forgiveness, for me, wasn’t about him. It was about freeing the little child inside me—the one who still thought he was unworthy of love just because one man couldn’t say it.

My father passed away last year. Quietly. As expected.

I didn’t cry at the funeral. I had cried enough for him while he was alive.

But I did whisper, “I hope you found peace,” into the dirt before they covered him.

Because even now, I carry his silence — not as a wound, but as a reminder.

That I broke a cycle.

That I learned to speak where he could not.

That I will never let my own children wonder if they are loved.

Because I was never truly carrying his sins.

I was carrying his silence.

And now, finally, I’ve put it down.