Inverted Hedgehog

For a long time, I considered my father an evil man. But that didn’t stop me from loving him. Looking back, his constant rejection may have fueled my endless need for validation and recognition, turning my ego into an inflated balloon – fearlessly defying gravity but also fragile, with even small impacts offering a total collapse. In the end, every balloon bursts, sometimes by doing nothing more than following its own ambition of leaving the atmosphere.

As a kid obsessed with jets, I imagined my family as a squadron of pilots, all on the same side top gunning their way through some abstract enemies. People that agitated me were on my side, but they ended up dying in some way – maybe doing some sort of a great sacrifice while kamikazing themselves to save the rest of us. This gave me a twisted sense of relief. My dad seldom survived those.

As a teen, things became simpler. I imagined sneaking into his room and shoving a knife into his throat. He couldn’t hurt me while he’s sleeping. But I could hurt him.

These malevolent thoughts always came from fear. I saw him choking my mother; I saw him push her down the stairs; I saw his head confronting mine as he headbutted me… Every random spark could trigger this violence, and every time I imagined everyone dying under his factory-hardened fists.

I was taller than him, but in my mind, he was always infinite. In his youth, they called him Beus, and to me, this sounded like a name fitting some ever-present divine entity. For us, that is what he was—this omnipotent force that we can only hope to defy.

In the end, he died a very non-epic death; killed by bladder cancer that shrunk him into an ember of a once great fire.

And even though my mom once cried on my shoulder, telling me how she couldn’t take his anger anymore, after his death only thing that she could remember was the great love she felt for him. She never regretted choosing him. He was truly the only person that she could’ve ever loved.

This seemed like some sort of coping mechanism to me. How could it be anything else? I remember her putting a red scarf around her neck to hide the blue stencils his fingers drew. I remember dead pixels on her face. How can that person still love if they are not themselves truly insane?

But she saw some good in him – something almost obliterated by the rage demon born of insecurity and familial trauma.

There were two sides to him, both fighting over the ownership of his body. But I consider only one my true father, one I adored so much, and one that my mother loved so much that she still considers her life complete.

The other side is some ancient entity haunting my father’s mind; something born long before his body was – some deep-rooted evil that cursed my family and cemented our path with trauma and violence.

I may never know what started it, but I can try to drive a knife into its metaphysical throat and extinguish it. A knife made not of steel, but of understanding.

This is what 3xD is. It’s not an assassination. It’s a war.