I’m 35F, and until this week, I thought I understood the worst thing my father ever did.
When I was eight, I got leukemia.
Right around then, he disappeared.
My mother never screamed about him. Never called him evil. She would just go still and say, “He left.”
I stopped trying.
That was the story. He left when I got sick. He left her to handle the hospital, the bills, the fear, all of it.
I survived.