The Scent That Took Me Back to My Father | by Selfthoughts | Sep, 2025

The lift doors slid open with a soft ding, and a woman stepped out. As she brushed past me, a wave of scent followed — earthy, laced with camphor, incense sticks, and something deeply traditional. For a second, I just stood there, breathing it in. It was the smell of my father’s home when I was small.

Whenever I visited him, that smell was everywhere, like it lived in the walls. Earthy, sacred, a quiet mix of prayer and silence. And just like that, in a crowded building, I was pulled years back into that space I once knew.

My father has been gone since June 2022. The ache of missing him never really leaves. Sometimes he comes into my dreams, and those dreams feel like gifts. In them, he is gentle, soft, the father I always longed for. I wake up holding on to that feeling, because outside of dreams, I never had much of him.

He had slipped away from me when I was very young. And when I turned seventeen, he was gone forever. No father-daughter bond. No memories to stack up. Just a craving that still sits inside me, like an empty place that refuses to fill.

I wonder what mistake I must have carried from a past life to be born into this story. People say it’s karma, that we should accept and move on. But how can I accept this kind of emptiness as something to be happy about? I want to make it right in my next life. I want to feel what it’s like to have that relationship.

Lately, I feel like parts of me keep slipping away, no matter how tightly I try to hold them. Yesterday’s scent reminded me again. I can’t hold everything. I can’t fix everything. Maybe letting go is the only way. I’m tired of clutching at pieces, tired of forcing things to be right. Some memories, like that scent, just come and go. And all I can do is breathe them in while they last.