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“And what do you think he ruined for you?”
“The one thing I was good at. My brothers had sports, or comic books, or special clubs. But me? I was the odd one out. The disappointing artistic one who talked too much and dreamed too big.”
Zahra’s lips remain pressed together, although I can read a hundred questions in her eyes.
I exhale. “I got to the point that I started resenting myself. All I wanted to do was make my dad happy, but instead, I proved to him time and time again why I failed. Why I was the weakest of his sons. Why my mother was better off never seeing me become such a pathetic child.”
A tear trickles down Zahra’s face. “You can’t believe that.”
Look at you making her cry. Always the same disappointment.
I shake the thought away. “I—I don’t know. But I changed. There was a shift in my mindset after—” I stop myself from revealing too much. “I withdrew. Learned everything I could from my brothers and stopped caring about anything but proving my father wrong. I spent every day proving why I wasn’t a disappointment.”
“At the expense of what you loved?”
“It was a price to pay for peace. I didn’t think I would draw again—”
“Until you saw my atrocious drawings.”
I nod with a small smile. “Because I didn’t know it at the time, but I wanted you to see me.”