I do not fully understand the man whose presence looms over my existence. He is an imprint left in my blood, an echo that vibrates through my voice when I raise it in frustration. I do not truly know him, yet he manifests within me, lurking behind my gaze when I glare, dictating the tension in my fists when my emotions boil over.
I resent him.
And I resent how much of him I see in myself.
His presence is an inescapable force, an oppressive weight that never lifts. He moves through the house like a storm without end, leaving behind an atmosphere thick with unspoken words and smouldering discontent. I hear him in the deliberate drag of a chair across the floor, in the pointed clearing of his throat before he speaks. His essence is suffocating, inescapable, pressing against my ribs, sinking into my skin. We clash like opposing tides, each wave of anger colliding with the next, each fight another storm that never quite passes. The house shakes with the force of our words, each syllable sharpened by years of wounds left untreated. He raises his voice, and instinctively, mine rises to meet it, mirroring his intensity, my fire feeding on his as the air between us thickens with acrimony.
He tells me I do not understand, that I fail to grasp the weight he carries, the burdens that define him. But what of my burdens? What of the weight he has passed down to me, the legacy of his resentment, his disillusionment, his silent but persistent absence even when he is physically here? He accuses me of being consumed by a rage that I cannot control. But does he not see? Does he not recognise the reflection of his own fury in me? Who does he think placed this fire inside me if not him?
I want to despise him completely. I want to scream until my throat is raw, until the sound drowns out every syllable he has ever thrown at me like a weapon. I want to take his words and hurl them back, make him feel the smallness he has forced me to endure. I want to burn away every trace of him within me. But then—there are moments. Fleeting, unbearable moments when I see something different, something I do not want to acknowledge.
I see him in the quiet, when the fight has drained from his body, when he sits alone at the kitchen table staring into a cup of coffee gone cold. I see the tremble in his hands when he believes no one is watching. I hear the way his breath leaves his body in slow, heavy sighs, as if the weight of the years is pressing down on his chest. And suddenly, my anger wavers, twisting into something that unsettles me.
For all my resentment, for all the fury that defines my relationship with him, I cannot stop the questions that gnaw at the edges of my mind. What broke him? What hollowed him out so completely? What pains did he bury so deep that they now manifest as this unrelenting storm? When I look at him like this—just for a moment—I do not see a tyrant or a monster, but a man. A man who has stumbled, who has failed, who has never learned how to love without leaving wounds in the process.
And despite everything—despite the scars, the fury, the endless cycle of battle—I find myself unable to fully hate him. Because beneath all the anger, beneath the history that weighs on us both, there is something else. Something unbearably close to sorrow.
And God help me, I almost feel guilty for holding so much against him.