I USED TO PRAY THAT MY FATHER WOULD DIE. THEN HE ALMOST DID, AND I DISCOVERED SOMETHING HORRIBLE ABOUT MYSELF. I was seventeen the first time I asked God to take my father away from us. Not because I hated him. Because I was tired of watching my mother cry in a house where she was supposed to feel safe. I was tired of the shouting, the slammed doors, the way we could all be laughing in the afternoon and walking on eggshells by evening. I hated how my mother defended him after every terrible thing he said. I hated how she would wipe her tears before coming out to ask if we'd eaten. Most of all, I hated that I had started becoming angry at her for staying. So I prayed for him to disappear. I never told anyone. I was too ashamed to admit that a part of me believed our family would finally become happy if one person were no longer in it. Then, four years later, he collapsed. The phone call came at midnight. My mother was screaming so badly I could barely understand her. At the hospital, I watched doctors rush him through a set of doors while my mother gripped my wrist like I was the only thing keeping her standing. And suddenly, I was seventeen again. I was that frightened little girl begging God to remove the source of our pain. Except now, the possibility was real. My father might actually die. I sat in that hospital corridor and cried until my chest hurt. I begged God to save him. I promised to forgive him. I promised to stop remembering every cruel thing he'd ever done. I promised anything. And then he survived. When I saw him awake, weak and unable to sit up without help, my first feeling was relief. My second feeling was anger. I was angry that he had nearly left us with so much unsaid. Angry that my mother had spent the night crying over a man who had caused her so much pain. Angry that even now, after everything, I still wanted him to look at me and tell me he was proud of me. I hated myself for that last part most of all. Because how could I want love from someone whose absence I'd once begged for? For months, I avoided thinking about that night. Then one afternoon, I heard my father telling a relative that he was afraid of dying. He wasn't afraid of the pain, he said. He was afraid his children would remember him only for the ways he'd failed them. I went into my room and shut the door. Because the terrible truth was that I had already started doing exactly that. I had turned him into the worst thing he'd ever done, and somewhere along the way, I'd forgotten he was a human being capable of being frightened, ashamed, and sorry. That didn't erase what he'd put us through. It didn't mean my mother owed him forgiveness, or that we had to pretend our childhood hadn't hurt. But I realised something that broke my heart. I had spent years waiting for my father to become a different man before allowing myself to grieve the father I'd needed. And I'd nearly lost the chance to tell him that I was still hurt, still angry, but that some small part of me had never stopped wanting him. We're not a perfect family now. Some wounds don't disappear because someone nearly dies. Some apologies come too late, and some people never learn how to love you without hurting you. But I no longer pray for people to disappear just because I don't know what to do with the pain they've caused me. I pray for the courage to face the truth about them. And the truth about myself. Because sometimes, the person you're desperate to escape is also the person whose love you've spent your entire life trying to earn. And if I'm honest, I still don't know which hurt more: the things my father did to me, or the fact that even after all of it, I still wanted him to choose me.