You taught me everything that once felt impossible. You taught me how to read, how to write, the multiplication tables… but more than that, you taught me to trust that my mind, which was always moving faster than everyone else’s, wasn’t a flaw but a gift. I remember how hard you worked to keep up with me, as if my curiosity were a train that refused to stop, and you kept learning, again and again, just to teach your little girl something new.
I remember the day I began to love physics. I had so many questions, such a hunger to understand the world, and you sat with me to explain that gravitational potential energy transforms into kinetic energy. You told me that this meant the higher something falls from, the more energy it gathers, and therefore, the more destructive its impact. I didn’t know it then, but that phrase would stay tattooed on me forever.
Years later, when the altar I had built for you in my mind came crashing down, I finally understood what kinetic energy really meant. The higher I had placed my idea of you, the harder the fall when I saw you as you are: a man, with your flaws, with your cracks.
I had to lose you to understand you. To lose the perfect image of you in order to meet you again—this time without idealizations, without the filter of the little girl who adored you without question. And now, our relationship feels more real, because it’s not built on the perfection I imagined, but on the truth that exists between us.
Now I look you in the eye. I love you as you are, not as I thought you were supposed to be.
I think that’s the deepest lesson of growing up: accepting that our parents aren’t heroes—they’re human. And sometimes, only when the altars break, can love become truly honest.