A Dad Shaped Hole

Church was my whole world growing up from youth services on Fridays, choir practice midweek to all-day Sundays. My closest friends were the kids from Sunday school. That was my social life. No sleepovers with school friends, no neighborhood adventures. Just church, and whoever my mother befriended after services.

My best friend was May— light-skinned, soft-spoken, loved, and deeply protected. Her Brooklyn brownstone felt like stepping into another universe. She had stability, sliced cheese, Barbie with a Ken, and a bookshelf full of Nancy Drew books and the Left Behind series Her father laughed easily, drew pictures with her and sang in the kitchen. You could feel that he wanted to be there.

Meanwhile, I came home to roaches bold enough for daylight, government block cheese, and hand-me-downs from 3 older sisters. My mother’s provision of slave-girl books from Canal Street felt like mirrors of entrapment, reminding me that I was poor, ugly, unwanted. I hated them. I hated what they reminded me of. And sometimes, I hated me too.

One day May’s mother handed me a book: A Dad-Shaped Hole in My Heart. We had never talked about my father or my home life. But she saw me. She saw what I lacked. The hole in my heart made me different, damaged, unfit. We weren’t the same. The title alone felt like a reminder of
everything I didn’t have. It wasn’t just a book—it was a spotlight on my shame.

With tears brimming, I mumbled a thank you and turned away before they could fall.

I never read the book. Still haven’t.
Not because I didn’t love reading—it was my escape. But that title was a thumb pressed into
an open, bleeding wound.
It burned enough already—like a thousand flames in the desert with no oasis.

Over the years my friendship with May faded. She moved on. I stayed in survival mode.

My father wasn’t present — not emotionally, not gently. He cared more about academic perfection than perfect hearts. Crooked handwriting meant ripped papers and screams over coffee (To this day, the smell of it turns my stomach). There were no hugs, no praise, no softness. Only cold critique and silence.

I only remember one affectionate moment between my parents — my mother laughing on his lap, blurry like a dream. The rest? Her crying. Praying. Enduring. That was my mother. My first example of womanhood.

I didn’t understand then what I know now—that some women stay because it’s all they
know. Because they associate suffering with godliness. Because survival is hypnotic. Because it’s easier to stay and make peace with the pain than to fight every day. As a child, I didn’t see all that. I only saw silence as he broke her—and us.

When my little sister was born nine years later, I felt betrayed — another heart for him to ignore. My older sister wasn’t biologically his, so he pretended she didn’t exist. And I learned that “tolerated” can feel just as painful as “unloved.”

At night, I’d cry into my pillow until it was soaked, flip it, cry again, until sleep finally won. That was my bedtime routine.

I’ll also never forget the bathroom mirror he shattered while discipling me. He swung and missed when I ran to the bathroom and cowered on the sink — his fist was meant for me. The glass was easy to replace. The trauma wasn’t.

That was my father.
And that was my hole.

A hole that can’t be measured with a ruler or patched with cement. A hole that causes
eternal bleeding, that leads to shock on the way to soul-deep demise. The kind of hole that shapes how you think, feel, accept love—or don’t. The kind that steals your joy, your childhood, your laughter, your voice. That trades them for a self-esteem so low it’s buried beneath the ocean floor.
A hole that, even now, I am still learning to crawl out of.