Collateral damage

“He sounds sincere this time,” my mom says to me, her expression hopeful. I look at her like she just uttered a disgusting swear word.

We’re talking about my dad, of course. We’ve had this conversation a hundred times in the last few weeks. My mom is an optimist, and I try not to contradict her, most of the time. But this is just one time too many.

My dad is a serial cheater, the kind that pretends to be sorry for a while and then goes back to his old ways when he thinks nobody’s looking. For the most part, my mom has always been willing to work things out—she has suggested counseling, family interventions, you name it—but my dad has never been one to take responsibility for what he does. He’s cheated on her twice (with two different women), and he never once volunteered to go into counseling. It’s just his thing. He likes to get himself into trouble, and then blame everyone else for his so-called “problems.” I have no respect for my dad, at least not anymore. It hurts to say it, but it’s the truth. Who respects a serial cheater?

It wasn’t always this way. I used to think of my dad as the funniest, most street-smart, guy I knew. He wasn’t much of an academic, but I respected his abilities. I admired his spunk. He always seemed so calm and collected, and I loved it. That was before I found out about the women, about how he had treated (and continues to treat) my mom. That was when things really changed for me, when I started to see my dad for what he really is.

The first infidelity was forgivable. It might be considered an indiscretion on his part. It happened years ago, during a very turbulent time in my parents’ relationship, and my mom forgave him, never said a word about it to us kids. We were much younger then, and I guess it was a wise decision on her part. If there’s one thing that can be said about my mom, it’s that she always put us kids before herself, even when it made her unhappy. She’s always been about “family,” and about making things work. I guess my dad never saw that.

“I’m leaving the family,” he said to me confidently. It hurt me to hear those words. It was like we all meant nothing to him, like we were as dispensable as his toilet paper. “Maybe I don’t love you guys anymore.” My mom claims that those words were said in anger, that he really didn’t mean them, but the fact that he said them is already something. It hurts me a lot, although I try not to show it. To have your own father say that to you, in all seriousness, is really something. You start to ask yourself: What did I do wrong? Why is he acting like this? Maybe it’s my fault?

It makes you feel really awful, like you’re such a nothing that even your own father doesn’t love you. That’s when all the questioning starts, when you stop thinking straight and begin feeling ashamed—of yourself. I speak from experience when I say it’s one of the worst feelings in the world. You can’t explain where it’s coming from. It’s just…there. Some kids become suicidal, others turn to vice: drinking, gambling, womanizing… Some kids get really angry, and they start to feel hate like they’ve never felt it before. This, I think, is what happened to me.

Before we found out about the second woman, I was living the idyllic life. I never got angry at anyone if I could help it. I always tried to resolve issues with my words, instead of with my fists. Everything is different now. I’m angry almost all the time. I’m angry at my dad, for being what he is. I’m angry at my mom, for accepting my dad for what he is. I’m angry at the situation that my mom has no choice but to accept my dad for what he is: a lying, cheating, hurtful and deliberately manipulative person. I say “lying” because he deliberately misled me and my mom about the woman. He claimed that she was “just a friend,” when she was obviously more than that.

I remember confronting him about the relationship and him lying to my face. It hurt a lot. I say “hurtful” and “deliberately manipulative” because he did not stop seeing the woman the first time we found out about it. He pretended to be reformed, but he continued to see her on the side. My mom eventually found out about it, and they had this really big fight. Things went downhill from there, and that was when he said that he didn’t love us anymore, that he wanted to leave the family. I was there when he said it. He was dead serious. Maybe if my mom hadn’t done anything to stop it, he’d have walked out and done a disappearing act. But I think that might’ve been a lot better. At least my mom wouldn’t be so miserable all the time.

Sure, my dad isn’t perfect. I’ll be the first to admit that. He makes mistakes just like any other person. I just never saw him getting into something like this. I just never saw him blaming my mom for what he did, as if it were her fault that he jumped into another woman’s bed. I guess that is really the crux of the whole thing, that in spite of everything that he has done, he still refuses to take responsibility for his actions.

I don’t think he even knows how much this is affecting the whole family. My mom is haggard, my sister is emotional, and I’m very angry. That’s the funny thing about infidelity: It hurts everybody, even those it wasn’t intended to hurt, especially those it wasn’t intended to hurt. My sister is only six years old—too young to be experiencing something like this. God only knows how it will affect her when she grows up. I can only hope that it won’t be too serious, that it won’t affect her for the rest of her life. I hope and pray for that every day.

Collateral damage—that’s what she is. Collateral damage.

“He sounds sincere,” my mom insists, a hopeful expression on her face. We’ve had this conversation a hundred times. It’s easy to see that my mom is starting to believe what she is saying, that my dad is really going to fix things in the family. I can only hope, for my sister’s sake, that he means it this time around.

KP Yu, 20, studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman.