hard feelings

By Ashton Salazar

Resentment.

I was being aggressively nudged around, growing annoyed at an extremely fast rate. There was a frantic muffled voice I could not make out that spoke to me.

My eyes shot up, my mother had tears in her eyes that were pouring onto my left leg, trailing onto the blankets of my parents' bed. She is grasping onto my shoulder after lengthy attempts of trying to wake me up. She is trying to calm herself down while furiously wiping her tears. She is trying to make out the words to say to me without the lump in her throat affecting her words. I am lying down at the edge of my parent's bed, with goosebumps traveling from the outside of my body and somehow, managing to reach my heart. Only frightened is the closest emotion I can describe this feeling as. 

I have never seen my mother so morbidly terrified. 

“What? What? Wait what's happening Mom?” the small-5-year-old me manages to mutter out to her. 

“Papa isn't waking up I don't know what to do please help កូន! (my child) should we call 911?”

That night is a night I will remember vividly. It is engraved into the crevices of my mind and it often comes back to haunt me. My father's limp body did not move no matter how hard I hit him. No matter how much force my mom put on his body—no amount of pleading out or yelling at my father worked.

 My father did not die that night.

I resent him. My relationship with my father was never easy. I would be lying straight through my teeth if I ever muttered those words to someone trying to evaluate my relationship with him, which makes me a pathological liar. It was never like the movies or shows on TV. Or like my friends bond with their fathers. Before the “hurricane” hit, it was tormenting to wake up from my brother's alarm, to go to school, to come back watching my mother busting her ass around the house just to help me and my siblings get by, while watching him drink his life away while preaching about his Christian morals.

That night put my dad in the hospital, in a coma for 7 months, I did not realize it would change the trajectory of my life forever. He was not there to drop me off on my first day of kindergarten like he said he would because he was lying there in a hospital bed unable to control his body. He was paralyzed on just the right side thankfully. Is thankfully the right word? I see it as a form of his karma. He broke yet another promise, but this time he had an excuse. Before the coma, he told me things would be okay when they weren’t. In reality, we were about to lose our house and financially struggled. 

Getting older, I began to realize it was his fault. Drinking, I remember he was drunk behind the wheel and we came to a red light. He told me to sit tight and he began to doze off, the light turned green and honking was the only thing I could hear. I was panicking and 

kept tapping his leg, praying he would wake up to avoid trouble. Yet he managed to find a way to pin the blame on everyone but himself.

“Why can’t I talk to my cousins anymore papa?”, I once asked after I saw him fighting with my aunt from my mother's side.

“They're no good; stay away from them,” he told me and continues to tell me today.

It is irritating to hear people pity him with phrases like, “He’s your father at the end of the day you should still love him” or “He’s still learning too” because they just don't understand what it is truly like to live with someone who is supposed to be someone to seek comfort and safety from. He refused to understand emotions other than happiness and anger. 

As I find myself approaching my 17th birthday, it scares me to hold so much resentment towards my father knowing that if he were to pass away, the last emotion I associated with him would be an endless irritation. I struggle with coming to terms with the fact my father is not the best individual. I feel like I’m pressured to “fix” myself and that I am the reason why our relationship is dysfunctional. 

I can still acknowledge he is my father, while also being someone that I do not want to associate myself with because of tirelessly trying to “fix” things. I wish people would understand that because I find myself questioning my morals when other people come into the equation. Looking into the hopes of the future. I wish to eventually come around to finding a connection with him. For now, I have to sit tight. 

For the Warrior Times, this is Ashton Salazar.