Or as my father used to call me:
The failure, the fool,
the thorn in his side,
the mistake he couldn’t undo.
I was the reflection of everything
that fell apart in his life,
the shadow of his regrets,
the burden he carried without words
and without love.

His names for me linger still.
They don’t just follow me—
they settle into my skin,
carving themselves into every breath.
They tell me who I wasn’t,
who I could never be.
I was raised to surrender,
to shrink,
to vanish into the silence.

I spent a year in that silence,
locked away in a dark room,
wrapped in a blanket that felt
both like a shield and a cage.
I cried softly,
as if even my tears were shameful,
as if breaking under the weight of his words
was just one more failure.
I swallowed my cries,
letting them seep into the walls,
until even the darkness grew heavy
with my silence.

But one day,
I stood before the mirror,
and the silence began to crack.
Piece by piece,
it peeled away,
until I saw someone staring back—
not the shadow he made me believe I was,
but someone real.

I felt like Rapunzel,
climbing out of a tower built from my pain.
The same tears that drowned me
became the waters that lifted me higher.
Each step was a choice,
each rung a rebellion against his voice,
against the image of who he told me I’d be.

Now, I stand here,
holding dreams I thought I’d buried long ago.
Dreams he could never touch.
And for the first time, I say:
Maybe, somewhere, he’d see me now—
not as a thorn,
but as the flower that grew
from the seeds of his neglect.

Maybe he’d see me—
caring for two horses,
teaching children,
studying minds,
speaking poetry
from a heart that refuses
to stay silent anymore.

But even if he doesn’t,
even if his eyes remain blind,
I know now:
I am not the thorn,
not the mistake.
I am the woman who climbed,
who rose from his shadow,
who carried the weight of his words
and turned them into strength.

I am Steffie.
The child who wasn’t wanted,
but the woman who now stands tall—
not because of him,
but in spite of everything he made me believe.