I was ten when my life quietly shifted in a way I didn’t yet have words for. My parents had divorced a few years earlier, and while I’d settled into life with my mom, I still carried a quiet resistance to the idea of anyone stepping into my dad’s place.
He wasn’t a father figure to me—just a man who suddenly lived in our house, sat at our dinner table, and tried a little too hard to win me over. I kept my distance. Answered his questions with one-word replies. Rolled my eyes at his jokes. No matter how kind he was, I refused to let him in. He wasn’t my dad, and I wasn’t going to pretend.
That winter, my school announced a holiday concert. It wasn’t grand—just the gym dressed up with paper snowflakes and a few strings of lights—but for a kid, it felt like Broadway. I’d been given a small solo. Just a few lines in the middle of a carol, but to me, it was everything. I practiced for weeks, humming under my breath, rehearsing in front of the mirror, whispering the words before bed.
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