How I wish I could have gone with my father the moment he was transported to America. If I had, maybe I wouldn't be drowning in regrets now—regrets that cling to me like shadows, growing darker with every breath I take. Each passing day makes it harder to suppress them, harder to ignore the gnawing thoughts that remind me of everything I could have done differently.

Ever since my father retired, life has been anything but reassuring. His time in military service ended five years ago when they deemed him unfit for duty. Five years. It feels like an eternity, yet I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was fifteen then, still full of ambition, still holding onto the naive belief that hard work and effort alone could shape my future.

I lived in South Africa with my mother and my younger sister, who had just turned twelve at the time. I spent my days buried in schoolwork, desperate to excel, to make my family proud, to carve out a path that would lead to something greater in just a few short years. But dreams don't always unfold the way we want them to.

At home, my sister was as troublesome as ever. She had a way of bending the world to her will, demanding validation from the online universe she worshiped. She spent hours streaming, going live, doing everything she could to increase her following, as if the opinions of strangers could somehow define her worth. It was exhausting—not just for her but for my mother as well. Raising a teenager obsessed with social media was already a challenge, but add financial struggles into the mix, and life became a never-ending balancing act.

My mother worked a single job, scraping by with what little income she earned. My father, despite his own struggles overseas, sent us money almost every week—sometimes every month—amounting to around thirty thousand rands. It was enough to keep us afloat, to ease the burden of raising two teenagers with vastly different aspirations. Looking back, those days felt peaceful. The illusion of stability comforted us, like the gentle sway of a boat sailing over calm waters.

But I should have known—the sea is never still for long.

I was never the brightest student, at least not at first. In the ninth grade, I was an E-class learner, struggling to grasp concepts that seemed to come so easily to others. But something in me changed that year. Maybe it was the fear of becoming another statistic, another forgotten name swallowed by the system. Maybe it was the need to prove that I was worth something.

Whatever it was, it pushed me.

By the end of ninth grade, I had climbed my way up to an A-class student. I wasn't just passing anymore—I was excelling. The satisfaction of seeing my mother and sister proud of me was unlike anything I had felt before. My sister, in particular, took to social media to boast about my achievements. She had always been obsessed with the digital world, but for once, I didn't mind. Even if it was just for the attention, she was proud of me. That meant something.

Graduation day arrived with a mix of excitement and nerves. My father had promised he would be there. He told me he wouldn't miss it for anything. But as the ceremony began, as name after name was called and I sat waiting for a glimpse of him in the crowd, doubt began to creep in.

I tried to push it away.

An hour passed.

Then two.

By the third hour, my hope had all but faded.

I told myself it was fine, that I understood. His duties bound him. He wasn't just a father—he was a soldier, and soldiers had obligations that went beyond family. It wasn't an easy life. It wasn't something I could fully grasp, but I tried to. Even as disappointment settled deep in my chest, I tried to understand.

And that was the burden of being the eldest son—you had to carry the weight of understanding, even when it hurt.

Two days after my graduation, a knock at the door changed everything.

A tall, dark-skinned man stood on our doorstep, his presence commanding, though not in a comforting way. My mother opened the door, listening intently to his words. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I didn't need to.

I saw it in her face.

Sorrow. Fear. The kind of grief that seeps into your bones and never quite leaves.

It took her a few moments to speak after he left. When she finally found her voice, it was unsteady, fragile, as if she was struggling to keep herself from shattering completely.

My father had been severely injured.

I tried to process her words, but they felt distant, unreal. He had been hospitalized for months—seven months, to be exact—long before I even became the ninth grade's top A-class learner.

The injuries were critical.

He had suffered severe burns and wounds no human should have survived while conscious.

He was surviving on tubes.

They showed me the photos. I still don't know why I agreed to look at them. Maybe I thought I needed to see the truth with my own eyes. Maybe I thought it would help me understand. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

The man in those pictures was barely recognizable. His skin, once strong and full of life, was now marred by burns and scars. His body, once proud and unyielding, was now frail and dependent on machines.

My world tilted.

I wanted to break down, to scream, to cry until there was nothing left inside me. But I didn't. I couldn't. My father had always been strong, and somehow, even now, I felt like I had to be too.

My mother didn't look at the photos—she couldn't. Her high blood pressure made stress dangerous, and my sister was too young to see them. So it was just me. I was the only one who had to bear the full weight of what had happened to him.

And even then, I refused to accept the possibility that he might not make it.

After that, my life became a blur of exhaustion and numbness.

My grades plummeted. The boy who had once been the school's pride, the top student, the one everyone whispered about in admiration, was now just another kid slipping through the cracks. Teachers ridiculed me, reminding me of how far I had fallen. They thought they were motivating me, but all they did was push me further into the abyss.

I stopped caring.

About school. About the future. About life itself .

By the time I turned eighteen, I had managed to scrape together a passing average of sixty-nine percent. It wasn't much, but it was something. And somehow, in my final year, I managed to claw my way back up. Term one of my matric year, my average hit seventy-nine. By term three, I was at ninety-four.

And for the first time in a long time, I stood on that stage again.

A gold medal hung around my neck, a testament to my resilience, to the fact that I had survived. But as I stood there, basking in the applause, I saw her—my mother, sitting among other parents, alone.

No husband at her side.

And that's when it hit me.

My father was gone. Not in body, but in presence. And in his absence, life had moved on without him.

When I got home that evening, my phone rang.

It was him.

Not my father, but the man who had delivered the news about him before.

And in those few minutes, as I listened to his words, I realized something I had been trying to ignore for a long time—my father wasn't coming back.

He had survived, yes. But the man who had once carried me on his shoulders, who had laughed with us at the dinner table, who had promised to be there at my graduation—that man was gone.

He lived in a small apartment now, cared for by someone the military had assigned to him. He was confined to a wheelchair, his once sharp eyes now clouded with the aftermath of smoke and pain.

And my mother? She had already moved on.

A new man stood in my father's place, a man with money and influence. A man she claimed to love, though deep down, I knew the truth.

She had built her new life on the ruins of the old one.

And I was done pretending it didn't matter.

Maybe it was time for me to move on, too—not by forgetting, but by choosing my own path.

I reached into my pocket, fingers brushing against the small, crumpled piece of paper I had been holding onto all day. A plane ticket. One way.

To America.

To him.

I didn't know what I would find there, or if I would even recognize the man waiting for me on the other side of the ocean. But I owed it to him—to us—to try.

As the waves pulled away from the shore, I stood up, brushing the sand from my hands. My decision was made.

Tomorrow, I would leave.

It was time for me to leave.