There was a time when my father loved me openly.
From the time I was very young until around eight or nine years old, I was his little girl. I followed him around everywhere. He used to watch cartoons with me, especially Bugs Bunny. Back then, I felt safe around him. In his eyes, I could do no wrong.
And I know that now because of what came later.
As a child, I used to have stomach problems often. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if it was stress, anxiety, the food, or all three combined. Breakfast most mornings was cornflakes with condensed milk mixed with water and a cup of tea. Sometimes my packed lunch would be a boiled hot dog on a bun sitting in a metal lunch pail for hours in the Jamaican heat. We didn’t have cooler packs back then.
I used to get nauseous a lot on the way to school.
Sometimes I would vomit in the car while my father was driving.
More than once, I threw up down his back while sitting behind him.
And he never humiliated me for it.
He would simply change directions and drive me to the doctor instead of school.
That version of my father existed.
That’s important for me to say because people like to flatten complicated people into one thing or another. But the truth is, there was warmth there once.
Then my younger brother was born, and something slowly began to change.
It wasn’t dramatic at first.
It was subtle.
I noticed that I stopped being picked up and held the way little girls are when they’re still seen as small and lovable. I started getting yelled at more often. Corrected more harshly. The warmth slowly cooled off.
At the same time, I was beginning to notice things about the adults around me that children probably were never supposed to notice.
My parents’ relationship was unstable. They broke up and got back together often. There were other partners involved during those separations, and none of it was really hidden from me. I saw more than people realized.
I also started noticing how differently my father treated my half-brother.
There was very little warmth there. Very little affection.
And one day, during a visit to my grandmother’s house, I remember being told why.
She explained it to me in the blunt language adults used around children back then. My half-brother was not considered a “lawful child.” In those days, people openly used words like “illegitimate” and “bastard” without thinking about what hearing those things might do to a child.
I hated those words even then.
But I understood the hierarchy they represented.
And eventually, I began noticing that my father was starting to treat me more like he treated my half-brother.
Not completely. He was physically harsher with my brother than he ever was with me. But the emotional shift was there. The softness was disappearing.
Around that same period, my father had retired from the police force and was temporarily out of work while my mother carried most of the financial burden. His contribution to the household became handling things at home and giving us extra lessons.
Except they were not really lessons.
At least not in the way children are supposed to be taught.
If he showed you something once and you didn’t understand immediately, punishment followed.
There was no patience in it.
No real teaching.
Just fear.
Before that period, I had thought of myself as a smart child. Confident. Curious. But slowly, that confidence started fading. I began feeling like I was stupid. Slow. Useless. Like making mistakes made me unsafe.
That was new for me.
And maybe that’s why the shift hurt so much.
Because I remembered the father who once drove me to the doctor after I threw up on him without making me feel ashamed.
I remembered the father who laughed at Bugs Bunny with me.
I remembered what warmth felt like before it turned cold.
Sable Monroe 
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