I’m A Trying Father

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He lights up a cigarette the old-fashioned way; with a matchstick. Like men did during the Cold War era, with their backs to the wind, protecting the flickering flame from death. Even though he’s only in his mid-thirties he already has an aged face, like he went to war with the universe and came back, licking his wounds, wondering what the war was all about in the first place. The face of a man coming into a realisation that he has not fully grasped nor is he even ready to embrace. He has thin eyebrows that look like lines that someone has been painstakingly erasing, their tenacity finally starting to pay off, leaving in their place a dark sliver, a faint stroke. He had asked me to, “protect my identity,” a request – I suspect – that is not driven by the need for anonymity but rather for self-preservation – he doesn’t want anybody to know who he is before he himself fully knows who he has become. It’s easy to like him, to empathise with him like one tends to do with tortured people, because with them you don’t reach rock bottom, you keep digging and digging and when you look up you have lost sight of the sky and you have become engulfed in their darkness.

He blows smoke away from me and says, “I don’t want to say that I was molested as a child for two reasons.” He squints down below at a leathered delivery guy, resting his bike on a stand. We are seated on two old ratty chairs on his balcony. Hand me downs. “One, is that it has the danger of taking away from my story. It’s easy to reduce my existence, my choices, everything else, to this fact. And second, I have a problem with the word ‘molested’ even though I haven’t found a word to replace it.” He says it seems “melodramatic,” as far as words go. I then offer that perhaps the word makes him feel weak and he doesn’t want to be cast as weak. He contemplates this with a grin and says, “I just think there are people who have been molested and it’s more serious than what happened to me.”

“E.g.?” I ask, slightly embarrassed to be this person who prefers to say “e.g.” as opposed to “for example.”

“Raped as a child. Raped as an adult. Held in captivity as a slave and raped.” He says darkly. “I think there are far more qualified sins that deserve the word molested.”

What happened to him was that between the ages of six and around nine his aunt used to stroke his penis, or aid him in masturbation. “Mom was never around, she was always off trading; going to Kampala to buy goods, back to Kenya for a few days or weeks, off again to Tanzania, back again, for a few weeks, off again to God-knows-where, buying and selling. Busy. She had shops that she ran, she gave us a comfortable life. She was working hard for us. We were unsupervised even though we never lacked.”

And dad?

“I don’t know where that dude is.” He says in a way that closes the door to any further investigation of that story. It’s like asking someone if they eat crabs and they say, “No, they make my tongue swell.” What are you going to ask after? So, we don’t talk about “that dude,” – that door is fastened shut and that act, in itself, is a story.

“She was a kind aunt, this monster, the most favourite aunt if you will,” he says, “kind, very loving, responsible and all that. My mom trusted her. We all did. I honestly didn’t think it was such a big deal at the beginning. I was confused, yes, but I actually thought it was some crazy gesture of love, you know. I thought she actually loved me more than she loved my other siblings, or even my cousins. That I was her favourite, which was why she was jerking me off. The favoured one, you know? But of course you grow older and you start thinking, aii, hapana, this story here isn’t normal.  And then you start avoiding her because seeing her makes you feel very shameful and dirty and sinful. You know?” The house suddenly echoes loudly with the ringing of his doorbell. A big ding dong. He gets up and drags his feet across the almost empty living room with two sofas, a big screen television and a coffee table in the form of a pallet. When he comes back he places a bottle of gin and two glasses on the table. The world now is inhabited by two sorts of people; folk who drink gin and folk who don’t understand why.

“You do gin?” He asks, wringing the top of the bottle as he opens it.

“Not really, but I’m also off booze.”

“Why?”

“January- I stay clean and sober.”

“Oh, dry January. Are you drinking only smoothies now?” He’s mocking me, the ass.

“Yah. And eating oranges. And sleeping early,” I say.

He chuckles as he pours himself a large portion of it and raises the glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

Cracks began to appear in his teenage years. He was unusually hypersexual. The type that would hump a desk. “As young as I was in form two I would be sneaking out of the school to go find girls in the neighbourhood to sleep with,” He says. He attended a boarding school. “It’s all I thought about man, sex. I’d be in class and all I’d think about is how I’d leave the class and go masturbate. Weekends I’d sneak out of school at dusk, climbing over fences to go to the small village-like bars around our school to go shag these girls in the bars who were much older than me. I must have been, what, 15 years? I was sleeping with women who were in their 30s already or late 20s. It didn’t help that I had money.” Sips drink, makes a face. “When you have a mom who is always away looking for money to provide and give the best for her children, she overcompensates for her absence and I guess the absence of your father by giving you too much pocket money. I suspect my mom always felt like it was her fault my dad was not in our lives…..” He chuckles and reaches for another cigarette from the packet on the table. His third one, I note, pettily.

The first match doesn’t light it but the second one does. “ So anyway, I had money. Which means when I walked into that bar, in my school trousers and a leather jacket, the women there would gather around me and I’d buy them beers and they’d tell me their problems and I’d lend them money and sleep with them. It doesn’t matter if you are underage, money will get you laid.”

Their school had some sort of a career counsellor who doubled up as a counsellor. An ageing man who never removed his coat. The joke in the school was that he was as old as the library. And the library was old. Nobody visited his office because he went to a high school where most students already knew what they wanted to be. “In my third form this old man found me in the school dispensary being patched up after the school fence had ripped off my thigh while I was sneaking through it the previous night. He didn’t say a word but the next day he sent for me and we met in his office and he told me that he knew that I was sneaking out of school. That he frequently drank in the neighbourhood bars and that he knew all about my escapades. We started talking, him asking me questions about home and shit and man, I started crying. I don’t even know where those tears came from but I just broke down a good one and I told him, the very first person, I told him about my aunt. He suggested that I join sports. So I joined rugby and I was aggressive as eff. I broke a collarbone, snapped a knee, got a number of concussions, almost broke my neck once. I was good at it because I was angry or something but this old man, man, he was always there, holding my hand, watching me. Like a father. Or a grandfather. ”

“Did you stop sneaking out?”

“No,” he smirks, “But I reduced the frequency. I finished high school and miraculously passed well enough to go to the University where I played more rugby and came out with a useless degree.”

Fast forward to 2017. He’s married with two girls. He’s doing business. His wife had gone through two very difficult pregnancies – the last one almost killing her – and the doctor had advised them not to have any more children. He had wanted a boy but those ambitions seemed like they would never happen. Then something very odd happened. “Someone in our high school Whatsapp group shared a Facebook profile picture of a young boy who was the spitting image of me. It was a joke in the group that the boy was me and we all laughed about it.” But it wasn’t a joke to him, he was taken aback by the uncanny resemblance. “So I inboxed him and long story short it turned out that he was a boy I fathered in fourth form when I would sneak out of high school to sleep with the village girls.”  Turns out that when the girl got pregnant, she was 21, she was shipped out to live with other relatives far from there to avoid embarrassment.

“Do you have a picture I can see?” I ask him partly because I’m curious to see the resemblance but also because I don’t want to be tricked by tall tales. He pats his pockets for his phone, does not find it, then gets up to go look for it in the house.  He’s one of those people who leave their mobile phones all over the place so when you call them they find your missed call after three hours. Defeats the whole idea of the phone being a ‘mobile’ phone.

When he comes back he hands me his phone. “That was me and him when I found him and we reconnected.” It’s a picture of a boy of about 11 or so who could indeed pass for his son. They are seated on a sofa, side by side, like they are waiting to be served tea in a house that doesn’t belong to them. “I wanted him to join us, be part of our family but my wife wouldn’t hear of it,” he says, taking back the phone. “She said that I wasn’t home enough to even take care of my own children and she didn’t want the burden of having to solely take care of another boy she didn’t know. A teenager, no less.”

“What was going on? Why weren’t you at home?”

He shrugs. He places a matchstick in his mouth. “Demons, tu. I think I was going through stuff,” he pauses and sips his drink. He then says that he tried being a present father but “external factors” couldn’t allow him to be adequately engaged.

“Where is your son now?”

“With the mother in the village, but I plan to bring him to live with me when I settle down.”

“What does settling down look like?”

“Settling down?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, when I am able to take care of someone else better than I take care of myself.”

I ask him how he ended up living in the apartment we are in on Naivasha road.

“My aunt fell sick,” he tells me, “the one who used to touch me. She fell very sick. Breast cancer. Then they found out it had gotten into her lungs and things. So she died. She died in a small hospital in a small town. I didn’t go for the funeral because I was in Rwanda that time, you know chasing paper. I didn’t care anyway. We hadn’t spoken more than five words in so long, like two decades. She was a stranger to me.” He taps the cigarette against his ashtray which is a plastic disposable cup with water. “I thought I was finally free from her. I thought she had died with the ghosts, her ghosts. But then I started getting very angry and desperate. I started blaming myself for not having the guts to confront her. I felt that her death had now completely rendered me a prisoner of my past.”

“You couldn’t confront it.” I say.

“Exactly.”

“I hit the bottle a good one,” he drops the cigarette in the paper cup and it fizzles and dies.

“I had two children that I wasn’t giving enough time to. I was caught up in my regret. I felt like I could never ever be free of this sin. Yeah, that’s how it felt like. You know how you are baptised and your sins are all forgiven? I wished for something like that, a place a priest would dip me in and I would come out anew without that shit that happened to me in my childhood. I became aggressive at work and at home. I’d get angry very fast. My children feared being around me because I was always in a foul mood. I spent too much time at the bar. My wife and I fought constantly. Those fights that get the neighbours calling the cops?”

“No, tell me one incident.” I say.

He says it was the only one. He had come home late and drunk and had woken his girls up and started talking to them and his wife was telling him off, telling him he was crazy, that he should let the girls sleep. That he was a drunk and a punk. Then a screaming match ensued in the living room from the children’s bedroom and the children started crying, no, wailing, so the domestic help slipped out and went to the neighbours to ask for help. The neighbour called the cops who came twenty minutes later in a land rover. “Cops at your door? Oh, that sobers you some,” he chuckles. “You hear that cops are chauvinists and all but I tell you that when they came they asked his wife, “are you feeling in danger?” and she looked at me and said, “yes” and that was it. Two of them immediately pounced on me, twisted my hand on my back and cuffed me. My children stood in the doorway, watching their father get cuffed by men in dark overcoats and hats. I think if there ever is a moment I hit rock bottom as a father, it was that moment for me. I don’t think they will ever forget that moment and it pains me, fills me with a great sense of failure. You know?” He sighs and lights another cigarette.

“You smoke a lot.” I offer.

“You and my mother can get along,” He says grinning but also meaning it. “I tried to quit and then I couldn’t stop. It helps me with stress. Or I think it does. It will probably kill me. But what’s left?”

That night I slept in the cell. The next morning his wife came to get him out. He recalls that she was wearing one of those Winnie Mandela headgears, which was a sign that she wasn’t going to take any more of his shit. She grew up with a father who drank too much and harrased everybody in the house and when they had started dating she was categorical; if you drink too much, I will leave.  “She bailed me out, but under one condition, that I’d pack my shit and leave because I was a bad husband and an even worse father.” He says smoking furiously. “I said, cool, get me out of here. I thought I’d convince her once I was out but when I got to the house I found two of her brothers sitting eating fruit. These guys were people who knew me and we were good friends but they called me outside and said, “Just leave, work things out from outside.” So I left. And she’s never let me back in. Which is okay, because I think my daughters are more at peace now.”

“You miss them?”

“Yeah. I do.” He says. “ When you don’t have a family, you become so rudderless. It’s like your roots have been yanked out of the soil and you are a tree floating in the galaxy, like this,” he rotates his burning cigarette before him like it’s floating in space, “You just make some drastic decisions and you keep sliding further down. I think I’m still caught up in that childhood and I don’t know how to break free from it. You know? It feels like it has defined me and where I’m going.” Pause.

“What do you think your wife, or ex-wife thinks of you as a father or a man, for that matter?”

He laughs then doesn’t answer for a while.

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“She thinks I’m lazy and irresponsible,” he says, “she once said that I will never amount to anything until I stop blaming people for my problems. She says I’m not a good influence on my children and they are better off without me. That I’m no different than her own father.”

“Is she right?”

“No,” he says after a pause. “Of course not.”

“Are you a good father?”

Another pause. “ I’m a trying father.”

“How are you trying?”

“I try to see them, to be with them, but she won’t let me.”

 

***

You have a fatherhood or motherhood story? Buzz me with a synopsis. (This doesn’t mean 2,000 words and photos), on bikozulu@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

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92 Comments
  1. (“Are you a good father?”

    Another pause. “ I’m a trying father.”

    “How are you trying?”

    “I try to see them, to be with them, but she won’t let me.”)

    This! This has got to be hard to think and even harder to say for him

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    1. Trying is not enough when you have betrayed someone on a certain level. Afadhali you just let them be. They are also trying to accept and live their lives with your failure and absence. Don’t you think she also blames herself for having ‘chosen’ such a man as a father for her daughters? Some people are better humans apart. Just figure yourself out first.It ialso very unfair how she nearly lost her life trying to have a baby of her own and here the guy was, expecting her to take in a grown kid she didn’t even know. This same guy who is yet to figure himself out in his mid-thirties. Call this bile but lots of people don’t even have the priviledge of blaming their childhood.

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  2. whether we like it or not our childhood defines who we become as adults. our generation is fond of saying we turned out fine but many people out here are not OK.unfortunately if he does’nt get his act together his daughters will grow up with daddy issues.they will be constantly searching for that male affirmation and love from any guy that they meet

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    1. You are therapy away from taking charge of your life. Most of us have childhood stories, they have shaped us and our twisted belief systems. Most of us are just functional people but we like to think we turned out okay. BS. We did not! I just hope you seek counseling because once you confront those childhood demons, you wont even wish your aunt was alive to confront. Life will get so much better. As it is, your children have already developed twisted belief systems that they will carry to adulthood. Heal yourself so you can heal your kids. Counseling is easily accessible now. It just needs to be normalized because a huge chunk of the population needs it.

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      1. Fifi.. Sorry to burst your bubble but therapy isn’t THE solution, but is part of the solution. Unless he does make it right on his own, therapy won’t help. He already knows his. For this one, he really needs to make a choice of being a good father because unlike cigarettes, you just don’t stop because you are tired or there is burn out. For a father, you wake up and choose your kids, make money and ensure kids are provided for, work on basics of a good relationship, you do things to be present and among the other things is therapy.

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        1. He needs deliverance therapy friends and all,,, he needs to forgive his aunt and himself
          People have lost our ways before due to trauma,, it’s a journey getting back but eventually it happens
          He needs to believe he can do it

    2. Zanne, the thing is, childhood trauma is real. We tend to superficially think we can change if we just decide to, but how can you change what you do not understand? Therapy is meant to go down to the root cause not just treating the superficial symptoms. Nobody in their right minds just chooses to be a bad father, point in case, this guy definitely isn’t choosing to be absent. #Need I mention his wife also needs therapy.

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  3. i don’t know Biko.
    My thought is – there is nothing like a trying father. You are either a father or not. grown ups must make solid decisions.

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    1. Mune:
      How can you sit there and be all judgy, like you are GOD?? Really?? You haven’t the foggiest clue of this brutha’s predicament and here you are pontificating like some damned Pharisee!! You should be ashamed of yourself!

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      1. Whereas I understand the impact of our past on our present, at some point we have to take responsibility for even the wrongs of a past we could not control; or we will never move on and when we don’t we extend that past to people in our present like our kids who just like us don’t deserve that past. Get help man, you still have what it takes.

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      2. Sadly it’s that simple, we have a clue, we have read the story. Let us not sugarcoat it. Only then can we as adults make better decisions,.

  4. What you think you are. What you think you aren’t, you aren’t.
    Either way you are right.

    Shift your perspective.

    Best Wishes>

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    1. You need to stop blaming a dead aunt for your drinking truancy.

      Am afraid, your wife may be right.

      What you are searching for is attention that you may have been deprived while growing up…..Get an attentive and down to earth girl and marry….stop drinking and find a purpose…take responsibility.

      Give us a comeback story 18months from now.

      All the best

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  5. “When you don’t have a family, you become so rudderless. It’s like your roots have been yanked out of the soil and you are a tree floating in the galaxy, like this,”

    I felt this… Hope he finds his way back to them.

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  6. What does settling down look like?
    “I don’t know, when am able to take care of someone else better than I take care of myself”

    This hit home! And what an ending!

    Great piece Eddy.

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    1. Wait, this ain’t Biko? How did you figure out it was Eddy? I had to go back and confirm, nothing. Felt like Jackson to me.

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  7. I see guys condemning this guy in the comments section in the blogpost, but I beg to differ. In real honesty the guy is sick and he needs serious help, a counsellor a rehab or something of the sort would suffice. Let us not be quick at judging for christ sake. We really don’t know his journey, what Biko has written here is just a tip of the iceberg. Sit a man down and listen to his whole story before judging.

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  8. I love a happy ending when I read a painful story, I sure didn’t get one today, but the beauty for me is that in telling his story the gentleman sees his faults. He does not seem to entirely blame anyone for where he is now. Still curious though, is his mom alive?
    There is still hope for someone like him, for a new beginning, for a fresh start. I do believe in recognizing our faults we become more keen to change.

    Uncle Biko thank you for sharing these stories, at this rate you may be a qualified therapist.

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  9. I guess you missed the chance to watch your daughters grow and show them some fatherly love. If you ever get such a chance again in this lifetime, try smarter, not harder.

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  10. Remember that blog post “i know what you did last summer”? This story is why that post wasn’t funny – teenage boys being taken advantage of is not funny or excusable – it causes real long-lasting damage (even when it’s not overt). That said, this guy needs to get his act together…children forgive present, loving parents, not absent ones.

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  11. Damn man! I feel his pain. Maybe because I can relate to the latter part of his life. Losing one’s family sucks like hell.

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  12. There are so many layers to this write up . We need to discuss his childhood, the absent parents are an issue in themselves, then the issue of sexual molestation leading into a troubled teenage and early adult life. Then there is the terrible marriage. Would be interesting to get perspective into how he met the woman he married (not sure if I can call her wife now). He is everything she detested in her father but yet… Which is a cautionary tale for his daughters. Then the son who he doesn’t know but has always wanted. and now his current alcohol and smoking problem.

    Wah!

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    1. I think the woman he married has nothing to do with his troubles. She was very clear that if he drank too much she would leave. Which means, of he drank responsibly she would stay. From the story, this guy still has a chance to salvage his marriage. He needs to work on himself first, as he has clearly put it

  13. This is sad and messed up. I commend him for telling his story but let him get help. Seek therapy …it will help him view life from a different perspective and do right by his daughters b4 it’s too late. Everyone has issues the difference is in who seeks a solution to get better. He is a trying father and could do better by getting help and finally being that awesome father.

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  14. My heart goes out to this guy.One day you will be out of the woods the healing has begun to imagine an aunt for that matter my sis doing that it is so sad.

  15. Is it the same cruise ship? Gin + Krest is bae! Also can’t see my daughter, her mum wont pick my calls, joined blue ticks sacco i guess, the watchman was told he will lose his job if i manage to get through the gate, same was re-iterated to the guard at her Westland’s office.. i send some kidogo money, its sent back, with interest, honestly i don’t know how i have not become a millionaire from that exercise! Tried getting groceries for her, a little this and that, leave it with the watchman to deliver them to the door.. monday morning, rushing to work, I’m struggling to open the gate, something is blocking it.. the kidogo shopping i did, soaked in the weekend rain. they say the devil wears prada, she liked those 3sok mtumba flats. I never cheated on her, never had any ugly verbal exchange. my crimes being making less than she did, unlike her brother in law some director at a local bank . .. women.. tsk..

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    1. Pole n then your daughter will grow up angry thinking you were an absent father while in reality your ex wife had an unhealed trauma of wanting a rich husband. Saaaad!!

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    2. You are entitled to see your child. Look for legal representation. A simple demand letter asking for visitation. If she does not yield, seek court’s assistance. All the best.

    3. You are a good father, you deserve so much better, stop trying with her, build yourself, your child will come looking for you one day.

  16. i dunno man, that bloke right there is honest to a fault. “trying Father” and all. a part of me wishes he could just figure it out.
    Yet when he places his whole assessment of value on having a family, i kinda weep. The thing is, so many men judge their value on that benchmark. you hear those words being thrown around a lot. ‘a man is only as successful as his family.’ ‘a man is rudderless without a wife and kids’ ‘ find a woman, settle down and work out your purpose’.
    that unfortunate yardstick, is the reason so many men are absentee fathers. buried in their work, to make a life for them kids, stuck in jobs they hate for them kids, selling their souls to secure them kids futures. doing everything they can, for everyone else but themselves. soon as a man gets a ‘steady income’ next quest is to settle down. i mean, what about travelling, hobbies, sports, true purpose? what happens when you discover all you wanted to do was write yet you are an accountant with 2 tots and a bun in the missus’s oven?

    don’t get me wrong, if the entire marriage thing is your cuppa tea, by all means drink from it. live it the best way you know how. become the best husband/father you can.
    all i am saying before allowing some lass to hitch her wagon to the mule that you will eventually become, maybe it is time we allowed men to discover themselves first.

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    1. Hmmmm….I share the same views! The same also applies to women and having children…… To each his own… Life is too short to live it based on other people’s “ideals” But hey, we are the ‘selfish ones’

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  17. Trying fathers need to appreciated no matter what!!! most decisions we make as adults are influenced by the talks we have with our dads and no matter how hard we try to pile BS on fathers, they matter. they really matter

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  18. most fathers are trying fathers and that may be okay for them but it leaves us to fight the demons of absent fathers. Its not judging but why can’t you fight your demons before you decide to drag another innocent human you are not ready to take care of into your fight? stop leaving us with mental scars we don’t know how to heal from.

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  19. Damn Ashioya, your vocabulary is rich…thrice I had to go and confirm whether you had mistaken sliver for silver or saliva; plus some other words that I’d rather not embarass myself here mentioning; anyway great read…I now truly believe men can be raped

  20. Trauma never goes away. Sometimes we can stop it from being a raging volcano by medicating on happy pills, that keeps you going, and playing the roles you are supposed to play.

  21. It’s not too late to be a father to your daughters and son but first seek help for your childhood trauma so that you can start to right those wrongs. Don’t let history repeat itself case in point your wife’s dad was sort of absentee while you have the chance to do right

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  22. This is absolutely sad, unfortunate and very sad!
    I pray he gets out of this bondage.
    As mothers we need to know that we need to be in our babies lives without over compensating.

  23. I’m sorry but just like possession in football is not goals, trying is not being a father. Of course, if I was also your wife, I wouldn’t let you near the children as you are subjecting them to the same mental torture your aunt did to you in childhood and it’s so unfair. It is even more unfair when you expect them to accept you as you are without going for any help. It’s a new year, I suggest you gather up the courage to go for therapy for your issues, quit drinking and smoking. That’s the only sacrifice you need to make to show your commitment to your wife and daughters. I also feel that you shouldn’t get in touch with your long lost son until you have your shit together. It would be so unfair to serve the same instability you’ve shown your daughters to him after this many years. Please let him/them be unless you are willing to step out of your comfort zone and allow yourself to be vulnerable to heal. Heal the child, heal the adult

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  24. This guy needs to stop shifting blame to other people. He knows he is doing something wrong but doesn’t want to change. You either win or learn not lose. Now let’s see you put your lessons into action and for Christ’s sake quit that peter pan syndrome!

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  25. So it happened! You can’t keep laying blame on someone who is dead and mess up your life, your daughters lives and those of generations after them (God forbid) because you don’t want to forgive, let go and move on. Forget the past! All this “sicknesses” people have is as a result of unforgiveness, anger and bitterness and that is their decision. What she did was inhuman but she can’t hold you hostage forever unless you let her. Make up your mind to become better and watch and read Joyce Meyers books who chose to overcome despite being repeatedly raped by her stepfather all her life. Good luck!

  26. Well, we all have our own demons…..a trying father or whatever father you are, it is just your view….what matters most is that you desire the best for your children. The rest are just tags, either a tag you’ve made for your self or others have labeled you.
    I wish you all the best in life.

    May you successfully slay your dragons and may you be reconnected with your children.
    Energy to you sir.

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  27. …. because with them you don’t reach rock bottom, you keep digging and digging and when you look up you have lost sight of the sky and you have become engulfed in their darkness
    May he get some peace and himself

  28. So how did he end up in the apartment on Naivasha road? Did the dead molesting aunt gift it to him? Did he pay it with money from Rwanda? HOW?

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  29. I have just become the proud recepient of my autographed copy of ‘Thursdays’ and learnt that an ocean ‘waves’ to say hello.You have made my day Biko thank you.
    Margaret.

  30. I think sad is a gross understatement of what I’m feeling after reading this, sad for the guy. I pray he finds light and the strength to heal and make things right. Good job Eddy. Lotsa love Sir Biko.

  31. Am just feeling for the Daughter’s, they are part of the cycle. His wife was raised by a drunkard dad, married this guy who has turned out to be a drunkard dad, as life will have ot the Daughter’s may end up in the same cycle and it goes on and on.

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    1. You are very right. And this is what we keep calling generational curses but in actual sense it is just a repetition of our childhood experiences. Unless treated from this root cause, we unconsciously continue the same patterns. A drunkard`s daughter will swear never to marry a drunkard, only to unexplainably marry one, just one example of multiple outcomes. People need therapy and counseling. Until this is normalized, society will continue to ail of childhood wounds.

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  32. From one trying parent to another, keep trying, keep moving in the right direction. Sending you love and light.

  33. While the auntie had her faults, we and Trying Father should lay the blame where it really belongs: absentee parent(s)….

  34. My take is both the guy and the lady need help.
    The lady was looking for a drunkard to correct her father’s mistakes from.thats why she had to lay conditions when they were dating.
    The guy was searching the hurt child in him on his children and that’s why he came late and drunk to wake them up.
    The children will grow with their own kind of trauma thanks to both parents

    2
  35. When you don’t have a family, you become so rudderless. It’s like your roots have been yanked out of the soil and you are a tree floating in the galaxy, like this.

    Everybody deserves a second chance.

    1
  36. Have this guy tried Jasus. Jesus Himself alone is who completely satisfies body, soul, and spirit. He is not just only all we need, but all that anyone has.

  37. Have this guy tried Jesus. Jesus Himself alone is who completely satisfies body, soul, and spirit. He is not just only all we need, but all that anyone has.

  38. “What happened to him was that between the ages of six and around nine his aunt used to stroke his penis, or aid him in masturbation.”

    I think sometimes men are victims too much as they may perpetuate GBV. It could be as a result of unresolved past traumatic/haunting experiences.
    Men’s mental health is important