What if I was the one…?
The rope of superstition bound our family tightly, choking us in a grip we couldn't escape. And yet, as I look back, a question haunts me: What if I was the one?
This is a tale of cowardice, ignorance, hopelessness, and selfishness—my own, and my father’s. Like father, like son, they say. One was a violent tyrant, and the other a coward frozen in his shadow.
I was the sixth child, the long-awaited son in a family of five daughters. I know now how terrible a father he was, but it seems his cruelty began long before I was born. My mother and sisters had plenty of stories to tell—each one a thread in a tapestry of torment.
For clarity, I’ll call my sisters by their order of birth: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
Our father was enslaved to superstition, his mind poisoned by the belief that daughters were curses and sons were blessings. Yet, life handed him five daughters before me.
At first, it was tolerable, or so I’m told. But when the 3rd sister was born, his frustration began to show. Arguments with my mother became frequent. He blamed her for birthing daughters, as though she had any control.
When the 4th sister arrived, his frustration boiled over into violence. He beat our mother, cursing her as if she had wronged him personally. My sisters, still so young, were terrified witnesses to their mother's suffering.
Then came the 5th sister. That was when the storm broke. He descended into madness, drowning himself in alcohol and dragging the family further into financial ruin. He became a man ruled by rage and resentment, hurling abuse at anyone near.
When I was born—a son—everything seemed to change. He stopped drinking and worked harder, and for a moment, the family dared to hope. My sisters and mother thought their suffering was over. They believed he would finally accept them. But the truth was far darker.
Though he adored me, his only son, he never extended that love to my sisters. They were still curses in his eyes, ghosts of his bitterness. He remained cold and cruel, cursing their very existence.
I often watched his rage with growing dread, wondering: What if I were in their place? What if I were one of the daughters instead of the son?
One day, I tried to defend my eldest sister when he raised his hand against her. His glare—a glare that felt like death itself—froze me in place. I was too weak, too scared to do anything. My tears flowed freely, but I did nothing. I was a coward.
My mother and sisters told me to stay quiet, to stay out of his wrath. I was the son, after all, the one spared his fury. They loved me, even the 4th sister, who often looked at me with blame in her eyes—blame I never understood.
The eldest sister, though, was like a second mother. She bore the weight of his abuse, protecting us when our mother could not. She had endured the most.
But even she couldn’t save us when our mother fell ill. The disease that took her could have been treated, but our father refused to take her to a doctor. When she died, we cried rivers of grief, but his response was cold: "Men don’t cry."
With her gone, our family unraveled. The eldest sister tried to hold us together, but it was too much.
Then came the day he brought a strange man to our home. "This is your fiancé," he told the 1st sister. She had never met the man. It was a deal our father had struck to pay off his debts. He had sold her, not as a daughter, but as currency.
After she left, the 4th sister ran away, vanishing into the world. We never saw her again.
Not long after, the unthinkable happened. The 3rd sister was attacked—raped by four men on her way home. She came to our father for help, her body trembling and broken, her tears endless. But instead of offering comfort, he blamed her. He called her careless and cast her out of the family.
I fought him that night, the only time I ever stood up to him. But it was too late. Her heart had already shattered. Unable to endure the pain and rejection, she threw herself from the nearby bridge.
At her funeral, the 1st sister returned. Her face was marred with bruises, her spirit dimmed. The man our father had sold her to had beaten her, used her, and discarded her.
And yet, through it all, our father remained unshaken. His blank expression at the funeral enraged me more than any outburst could have. He didn’t care—not about my sisters, not about their suffering, not even about himself.
The final blow came when he forced the 2nd sister to work at a host club. She returned home in tears, recounting the vulgar hands and leering eyes of strange men. That was when we decided to leave.
The 2nd and 5th sisters found work as housekeepers. I had just graduated and took a steady job to support us. The 5th sister found happiness with a kind man and started her own family.
But the scars ran deep. The 2nd sister never married, unable to move past the horrors she had endured. The 1st sister lived a broken life with her daughter, abandoned by her abusive husband.
Years later, I visited my father on his deathbed. He smiled at me before passing, leaving me with more questions than answers. Why had he been so cruel? What drove his obsession with inequality? I still don’t understand.
Now, I live with my wife, our daughters, and the sisters who remain. We’ve built a fragile peace, but the ghosts of the past linger.
And even now, in the quiet of the night, I find myself wondering: What if I was the one?
(This story is fictional and doesn’t relate to any real events)
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