Eulogy For Father

My hands are shaking as I stumble back and slump down against the plain white wall, grasping an old family portrait, looking up to avoid the tears from blurring my vision and holding it in front of my face with both hands in an attempt to steady myself. I feel my breathing calm down and a grin spread across my face. It’s a picture of me when I was 7, cheerfully blowing out candles on a chocolate cake my parents held with my mother standing on my left and my father to my right. “How fitting, don’t devils sit on your left shoulder?” I snicker while I hastily tear the photograph in two and fling the side with my mother towards the centre of the room. She deserved it. I saw what she did to Dad. I’ve seen it all. It was terrible but I couldn’t
When I managed to find myself alone with Dad, I’d question the blood stains on the carpet and the cuts on his neck and arms, but he would never say anything but ‘I’m fine’. It tortured me. I was just mere child, what else could I have possibly done to stop it? Nowadays, he doesn’t even come out of his office and bedroom besides to go to work, to the bathroom and to eat. If you’d take a glimpse of our lives during these moments when the family was together you’d see a loving mother and a hardworking father sitting at a large dining table with a young but quiet daughter. You’d never be able to guess that my mother abused my father like that. My classmates at school reckoned I got it lucky just because I lived in this big house and had enough pocket money to buy all the toys I wanted if I could. Buying the latest dolls was the last thing on my mind when it was just filled with the constant hatred for my mother. It’s annoying to have to see my parents put up this facade whenever they stepped outside, cheerfully greeting their neighbours and putting on those fake smiles of theirs. Everyone thinks we’re the ‘perfect’ family but it’s far from the
She was kind to me as always but whenever she turned her back away from me, I’d curse her under my breath, casting spells of death and misfortune. People have stopped talking about how my family was perfect and started calling Dad cruel names instead. I’d attack those who did, screaming out the truth in their faces but I would always end up battered on the ground. No one would come to help as I cried out to the world with choked sobs that my dad never deserved it. Occasionally, after these fights when I’d just lay there with my head against the ground watching small droplets of red puddle up on the concrete, I’d catch myself thinking that my dad was perhaps indeed a terrible person, accused with domestic violence and rape, and that my childhood memory was just messed up and warped like the others said but I quickly correct myself. My mother was the one who was abusive, not Dad. It doesn’t matter if all the evidence pointed to my dad, I was sure that my mother was the one who beat up my dad on a daily basis. It was HIM who got beaten. It doesn’t matter if it’s been years since my dad got taken away and if I have to become the most hated teen, I WILL get Dad