HAMO. Love came late, but it was still love. | by μούσα de la forêt | Sep, 2025

I grew up in silence. Not the gentle kind of silence that soothes, but the heavy kind that presses down on you until you learn not to speak, not to ask, not to hope. My childhood was not a place of laughter or comfort. It was a place where I lived in the same house as my father but felt like I was sharing space with a stranger.

My father worked as a janitor in the city. Every morning, he rose before dawn and rode his bicycle to work. I would watch him prepare in the dim light, his shoes worn thin, his shirt faded, his bag slung over his shoulder. That bicycle became a familiar sight, the sound of his pedals creaking down the road before the sun fully rose. At night he returned with tired eyes and the faint smell of disinfectant on his clothes, the kind of smell children do not understand but other children notice.

He had anger in him. It was sharp, unpredictable, and terrifying to a child. Sometimes it flared over small things, a glass left on the table or a sound that irritated him. Other times it hid behind his silence, simmering until the house itself felt tense. I learned to read his face like a textbook, memorizing the signs of when to stay away and when it was safe to breathe. I lived like a guest in my own home.

Meals were the hardest. We rarely ate together as a family. I often ate alone, seated at the table with only the scrape of my spoon against the plate for company. He would eat quickly, silently, and leave the table before I finished. There was no conversation, no asking how my day went, no laughter shared over food. I remember staring at the empty chair across from me, imagining what it would be like if he sat there and talked, if he noticed whether I liked the food, or if I was still hungry. The silence at those meals became its form of hunger, a hunger for love and connection that never came.

At school, my father’s job followed me like a shadow. Children can be merciless, and they were to me. When they found out my father was a janitor, they used it as a weapon. “Your father cleans toilets,” they mocked, their laughter sharp and cutting. They wrinkled their noses, made jokes, and reminded me daily that my father’s labor was, in their eyes, something shameful. I tried to laugh with them, pretending their words did not matter, but every insult sank deep. I hated walking into that classroom, knowing whispers would follow me. I hated seeing pity in the eyes of teachers who knew but said nothing.

The bullying did not stop at words. Sometimes my classmates would mimic the motions of sweeping, pretending to scrub the floor when I passed by. Sometimes they held their noses, pretending I carried the smell of cleaning products with me. They turned my father’s dignity into their cruelty, and I carried that shame home like a secret I could not put down.

I began to resent him, not only for his silence at home, but also because I was bullied because of him. I did not see then that his work kept food on our table. I did not see that his long hours were what gave me the chance to sit in that classroom. All I saw was the humiliation, all I felt was the sting of their words. When I looked at him, I saw not only the man who withheld love, but the reason I was despised by my peers.

The loneliness was not just at school. Every morning I walked to school alone, carrying my bag on my back while children around me clung to their parents’ hands or hopped into tricycles and cars. I walked past them quietly, pretending not to notice. I used to wish my father had put me on the back of his bicycle, pedaling beside me until I arrived safely. I imagined holding on to his shirt, feeling the rush of wind, and stepping down in front of my school with him by my side. That wish never came true. He always rode away before I even left the house, his bicycle a symbol of distance instead of closeness.

It was through that bicycle that I learned how to ride, though not because he taught me. I practiced on my own, wobbling and falling, scraping my knees, climbing back on until I found balance. The first time I pedaled without falling, I looked around, half hoping he might be there to see me. But he was not. I taught myself, just as I had taught myself to eat alone, to walk alone, to survive alone.

I stopped asking for things. Toys, books, even simple requests for snacks or new shoes – I silenced them before they could leave my mouth. I knew the answer would be no. We had food, we had shelter, but affection was never on the menu. Our house was a place of survival, not love.

Books became my escape. In them, I found fathers who hugged their children, families who celebrated birthdays, and dinners filled with laughter. I devoured those stories like oxygen, each page a reminder of what I longed for. Yet when I closed the book, the silence returned, heavier than before.

High school did not make it easier. By then I had grown used to my invisibility. I told myself it was normal to have a father who never said he loved me, normal to be ignored. But at night, when the house was quiet, I lay awake and wondered why I was not enough to soften him. Why did my presence seem only to irritate him? Anger was the only thing he knew how to give me.

College was my first taste of freedom. I arrived carrying invisible scars no one could see. I did not know how to accept kindness. When a professor praised me, I doubted it. When a friend hugged me, I stiffened. When someone offered help, I felt guilty. Love was a language I had never learned, and it frightened me.

But slowly, through friends who laughed loudly, who hugged freely, who said “I love you” to one another without hesitation, I began to learn. One friend once told me, “You deserve to be loved without having to beg for it.” That sentence pierced something inside me. I cried that night because I had spent so long wondering if I deserved anything at all.

Then one day, something happened that I never expected. After I graduated, my father asked to speak to me. I thought it would be about money, errands, or some ordinary matter. But when we sat down, his hands shook. His eyes were wet.

“I am sorry,” he said.

I could not move. Those words had never passed his lips before. He looked at me and began to cry, telling me he was sorry for not being a father, sorry for not holding me, not loving me, not showing me what a parent should. He said he regretted every year we spent under the same roof as strangers.

I broke. Every lonely birthday, every cold dinner, every insult I endured because of him, every time I hated him for his silence, every wish I carried in secret – all of it rose inside me. Part of me wanted to scream, to say it was too late. Another part wanted to collapse into his arms like the little girl I once was, desperate for warmth. Instead, I cried with him.

His apology did not erase the past. It did not heal me instantly. But it planted something I had thought impossible: hope.

Since then, he has tried. In his awkward way, he has tried. He asks about my work. He smiles more. He makes small gestures of care. It feels strange, like we are two people learning how to be family after years of pretending not to be. But I let him try, because no matter how much anger I carried, I had always longed for him.

Now he is eighty. His body is frail, his health unsteady, though slowly recovering. On my days off from work, I come home to care for him. I cook his meals, help him walk, and remind him to take his medicine. Sometimes I see the frustration in his face, the anger that once ruled him now turned against his failing body. But there are moments when he looks at me with gratitude so deep it undoes me.

One afternoon, as I fed him soup, he whispered, “Hayaan mo.”

I looked at him, confused.

He smiled faintly and said, “Hayaan mo, balang araw makakabawi rin ako.”

The words pierced me. For so long I had waited for any sign that he cared. Now, here he was, old and weak, still promising he would make it up to me. Even if he never fully can, even if time has stolen too much, I no longer need him to. In his apology, in his effort, in those words hayaan mo, I finally felt the love I had been denied.

Caring for him is not easy. There are days when I am exhausted, when I wish I could rest instead of sitting by his bedside. There are moments when I remember the child who ate alone, who walked to school alone, who cried silently in her bed. That child still aches inside me. But then I look at him, at his frail body and trembling hands, and I remember the woman I have become. I am no longer invisible. I am no longer voiceless.

My father is still here. He is still fighting, still recovering. We lost so many years, but we have this time now. It is not perfect. It is not the kind of love story most people imagine between a father and daughter. But it is ours.

And when he looks at me with tears in his eyes, says he is sorry again, whispers hayaan mo with a frail but hopeful voice, I understand something at last. Sometimes love comes late. But when it finally arrives, even if fragile or broken, it is still love.