You'll have a daughter someday. She'll be your heart, your soul—you'll be so wrapped around her finger, you'll start to believe her skin is your skin. She'll exist in every crevice, every corner. She'll be your world, and you'll find existence meaningless without her.
Fatherhood will be the only thing that will bring you more joy than being a husband.
That daughter will remind you of someone someday. She'll exist as a stark replication of her—the girl before the wife. The one you let go before you met the one. The last woman standing before marriage whisks you away to a life without any trace of her.
You won't know why. You won't know how. But you will know this: any semblance of that woman through your daughter will knock the wind right out of your lungs. Your veins will run dry, and time will stop just like it did the day you realized she was never coming back.
It'll baffle you: you'll swear you witnessed your wife give birth to this child. You'll be ready to proclaim that you saw your little princess tear out of her mother's body. Crying and wailing murder to make her place in the world. You'll take an oath to bear testament that she is yours—equal parts you and your wife.
Yet, the day will freeze when your daughter laughs like her, snickering and covering her mouth before she begins hollering in pure amusement. You'll notice your daughter begin to express a certain infatuation with anything that has glitter, or the rainbow, or a reference to horror movies. You'll find her. You'll find her within your child.
The clock will begin ticking again. This was the greatest psychological time machine you'd ever known.
Because your body may age with the present, but some part of you was always left there. Because you left a piece of you with her as a haunting possession. Because the woman really did come back.
Or perhaps she never really left. Either way, your memory kept her alive.
You'll watch her grow—your daughter, expanding that deep-rooted stubbornness within her. Your daughter will pen miracles into poems. You'll read the words. You'll remember. It'll all come back to you.
Her blood on paper will mirror blood you've read before. Because you caused the bleeding. You twisted the knife. Her blood kept you eternal in the soil of those pages.
It won't stop there. Your daughter will begin to enjoy coffees at night. She'll be smitten by psychology, beg you to adopt more than one cat. She'll be obsessed with sharks and dinosaurs. Her neurodivergence will spill beyond her room and take over your home.
But the walls of your heart won't crack. The furniture in your mind will lay in dust. In fact, each plate set on the table of your cognition will remain exactly as it was—because they've seen this film before. They wrote the script. They know the ending.
This was the first audience you rehearsed for. The first ones to applaud the facade of you, your performance.
Your daughter will make you proud. She'll excel at her education, she'll flourish in her career. She'll have a strong sense of justice and a highly empathetic temperament. And she'll use it to help her community. And her community will thrive because of it.
Your little princess will age into a woman who will curse with such intensity that it'll make sailors drown their ships in shame. She'll be rigid in certain matters, no matter how much she needs to compromise. She'll hate certain foods, rewatch the same TV shows, won't be so extroverted, deny your spontaneity with excuses of laziness, and will be perfectly content with a small, intimate group of friends.
And you'll wake one night, startled and jolted, sweat beading on your forehead. A stupor shaken beyond comprehension. Your wife will bring you water, but you won't have it in you to confess that no water in the world could quench the thirst of guilt that keeps your throat dry. She'll massage your shoulders, but it won't truly register. You never felt comfort after you untied your end of the enmeshment.
Because somewhere out there was her.
With her jokes and sarcasm and self-deprecating humor.
Her curiosity and collection of insignificant fragments of life.
Her ability to notice even the smallest details about you.
The purest soul you've ever known.
The humility with which she carried herself.
The chaos of her anxiety and overthinking and constant alertness.
Her days of masking pain, etched like artifacts on her bones, and nights of simply trying to survive.
Her quiet decision to never bring a child—no, a daughter—into this world, terrified she would be broken by a man just like you.
The magnitude of strength it took her to keep those unborn children in her imagination so that her little girl doesn't succumb to a boy like you, and her son doesn't grow into an angry man that hates the woman he loves.
Her and the grief you surrendered, abandoned to her responsibility, sacrificing the realest connection you've ever known.
Her, and your daughter just like her.
Because a girl like her exists. And that will mean somewhere out there, there will be a boy.
Someone's son will come into your daughter's life. Someone's son will charm her and earn her trust.
Someone's son will keep her loyalty hostage. Someone's son will make your daughter fall madly in love with him.
Someone's son who was bound to curse her fate.
To translate her love into mourning.
And this will be the reality which no amount of water will help go down your throat. This will be a person who'll leave markings on your daughter's tombstone. He'll bring riches with the pearls of her tears. He'll collect her peaceful slumber. He'll scar your daughter so mercilessly, she'll never be the same again.
With his empty words and even emptier promises. With his captivating smile and a prowess to gain your daughter's obsession.
You won't be able to save your precious child when the oncoming train of him ties her to the tracks. You'll recognize the dance of avoidance, remember the lyrics of attachment.
You were once the choreographer. The songwriter.
But your body won't move, you won't be able to sing along.
Because you'll be left speechless, just like you left her. You'll stay stagnant, just like you stagnated her.
You might have been the expert of the skies and seas. But here on land you'll watch his planes of accountability take flight. You won't be able to swim to her sinking ships.
It's heavy to be on the other side, isn't it? The helplessness when flights of hope catch fire and crash. When the anchors of trust don't save but drown.
You may have killed someone in a different lifetime. But in this one, you'll witness another die again and again.
And you'll swear you aren't living a nightmare.
You'll cross your heart and really will hope to die.
Because if she haunts your living room, exists as your daughter, brings rebirth to her tragedy—then somewhere out there will be him.
The man for your daughter.
There will be a son like you.
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