Mom is cooking in the kitchen, and he is bathing. I am the only one in the living room. I turn up the television, tiptoe into his bedroom, approaching the cupboard near his bed in which he usually places his cellphone. Three, two, one, five. Luckily, he has not changed the password. I press on the WhatsApp icon, searching the name “May”. Here it is. I click on it. Again, a lot of heart emojis appear on the screen. I take out my own cellphone, taking shots of all these intimate conversations, collecting the evidence. I do it swiftly and put his phone back into the cupboard. When I leave the room, he asks, “Why did you come out of my room with such a weird expression?” I answer, “Nothing, Dad.”
To me, he used to be perfect. He has been a strong and brave warrior, who takes care of and protects his family. When I was little, I wished that I would find someone like Dad to be my husband when I grow up. Not only is he my father, he had been my idol, my hero and my everything until one day when I found out the ugly truth.
That day, Dad left home for work, and I had no school to attend. I was sitting on the couch with Mom, watching a TV show in the living room. Suddenly, a phone rang. That was my Dad’s phone.
“Seems that he has left his phone at home. See how careless your Daddy is,” Mom smiled. “Can you help answer Dad’s phone?”
I headed towards Dad’s room. A person named May was calling my Dad. When I was about to answer the phone, it stopped ringing. I did not suspect anything. I couldn’t wait to rush back to the couch and continue watching the TV show. Then, my Dad’s phone vibrated, with a WhatsApp notification popping up on the screen. It was the May who was looking for my Dad again. “I miss you too <3,” she sent.
Everything became strange to me. I was curious. Who was she? Why was this woman sending such a text message to my Dad? Driven by my curiosity, I unlocked his phone to see what was going on. It did not take me long to find the password he had been using for almost everything in his life. See? I knew him well. I clicked on the conversation.
When can we meet again? I can’t wait to see you.
Me too. I miss you.
I miss you too <3
I froze, so did my heart. That was just a small part of the conversation. My hand couldn’t stop scrolling the phone, reading the other conversations. Kept scrolling, kept reading, kept scrolling, kept reading.
“What takes you so long? Who was calling Dad?” Mom asked. Mom’s voice got me out of the loop.
“I don’t know. That person hung up before I picked up the phone.” I tried to reply Mom calmly, hiding all my complex emotions.
I marked the conversation as unread. I put back his phone. I returned to the couch. I kept my eyes back on the TV screen. I pretended nothing had ever happened. But my mind couldn’t. How can he do this? Why did he do it? My admiration and my respect for him had vanished since that moment. He turned ugly. I didn’t know him anymore. Maybe I had never been.
My anger, my grief and my disappointment to Dad kept growing in my heart since that day. But I didn’t start a fight with him. I needed some evidences before I told Mom what Dad had been doing behind her back. So, I had developed a new habit. Every day I would find a chance to read his WhatsApp conversation with May. The more I read, the more torturous I felt. But it did not stop me. I used my cellphone to take shots of the conversation, collecting all these evidences of infidelity so that one day I could confront him, tearing his mask off in front of my mother.
I tried to suppress all my emotions, though. I couldn’t show any sign of my inner anger before I was ready to tell Mom all the truth. Otherwise Dad might turn cautious that he might delete all the WhatsApp records, making up excuses, or even contacting May through ways of which I couldn’t keep track. Therefore, I talked to him the way I usually did. I pretended that I had known nothing, just like how he pretended that he had never cheated.
One day, Mom was out to meet her friends, leaving Dad and I at home. Both of us were sitting on the couch, reading. The house was so silent that we could even hear a mosquito flying. I could not bear to sit next to him for too long. So, I put down my book on the coffee table, heading back to my room.
“How many times have I told you that you should be tidy? Why don’t you just return the book back to the bookshelf?” Dad murmured.
“It’s just a book.” I rolled my eyes.
“How can you deal with big things in the future if you cannot even handle all these trifles? How can you be successful if you cannot even manage your daily life?” He kept his eyes on his newspaper.
“So what? Aren’t you the one who asks Mom to pack your handbag for work every day? It seems that you are the one who can’t even manage your own life.” I challenged him.
He looked at me, frowning. “How can you talk to your father in this way? Stop being immature. You are an adult now!” He raised his voice.
His face was turning red, so was mine.
I pushed one step further. “And who are you to tell me how to be a right person? Who are you to teach me all the philosophy of life? Who do you think you are, huh?”
“I am your father!” he shouted at me.
“And a liar, a cheater, a betrayer! Tell me, Dad! Who is May? You thought I didn’t know? You thought you could just hide what you have done, pretending you have done nothing wrong throughout your life, like a perfect father, like a Saint? Who is being immature now?”
I walked closer to him as I screamed. I raised my chin up, and I glared at him through his pair of eyes. I could see the reflection of myself in his pupils.
He turned speechless. The house was once again silent. I had been mentally rehearsing this scene of confronting thousands of times before. I would have spilled all the truth, he would then deny, and I would next present all the evidences I had collected, playing my ace. I was waiting, waiting for his explanation, waiting for his excuses, waiting for his next act. I was ready for the next round of fight.
“This is the biggest regret of my life. I am sorry. I know I’ve done something wrong. But trust me, I am also painful.” He shed a tear. He went back to his room, leaving me alone in the living room, leaving me alone in the arena. I could hear him sobbing behind the door.
This was not something I had expected. I had never saw Dad shed a tear. I had never heard him apologizing. “Regret” and “pain” were something that I thought never existed in his soul. Standing in front of me was a naked old warrior who had taken off his armor and put down his weapons, showing his blood and flesh in front of me for the first time. He was so weak, but at the same time, he was so real. It was his tear which showed me a fact which I had never noticed. He was a human. He had two sides – good and bad. I was the one who kept perfecting him, thinking that he would never make a mistake. I was also the one who portrayed him as a devil after I had found out his dark side, forgetting all the good deeds he had done. All these years I had only paid attention to one side of Dad. I had never known him. I had never realized that no matter how huge, strong and righteous he had been in front of his daughter, he was just a little human, like me, like everybody else. He made mistakes, he had emotions, and he had struggles. It couldn’t be an excuse justifying his infidelity, but this thought made me less judgmental to Dad. The weight in my heart had been lightened a bit.
A few days later, I checked his phone again. Dad wrote a text to May, “I couldn’t do this anymore. Let’s end it.”
That was the last time I checked Dad’s phone. I decided not to tell Mom. I decided to forgive and let go. I deleted all the evidences in my phone. I know that both Dad and I can never change the past. He did it. He hurt me. He hurt himself. However, my choice of letting go can protect Mom from all these pains I have gone through, protecting her and the family. Now, we three still sit on the couch together after dinner, watching soap operas. We still go on family date on Sundays. I am thankful that I did not let my anger burn the precious things we have had into ashes. It is true that the relationship between Dad and I cannot be restored to the point before everything happened. Those remaining emotions still sometimes keep me up in the middle of the night. Yet, I have learned how to forgive, how to let go, how to embrace the dark side of someone you love.