Is it my fault that I grew up too fast? Some children are blessed to grow up in loving households, where the luxury of innocence is allowed toflourish.
They have the space to dream, to stumble, to be sheltered. Meanwhile, children like me, raised in households built on survival, learn to mature early. We are shaped not by softness, but by necessity. When life demands survival, loving becomes a luxury we cannot always afford.
I was a product of survival, not comfort. A product of a generational curse passed down silently, generation to generation. In a surviving household, children become investments — raised not only to live, but to repay, to achieve the dreams their parents never reached. We are not just loved; we are prepared, molded, hardened.
We are the retirement plans, the promises, the “one day things will be
better.” I chose survival because loving felt too far, too fragile. Becoming a soldier wasn’t my dream — it was my father’s. It was the life he envisioned for himself but never achieved. His dreams, his regrets, they all rested on my shoulders. I carried them with me into the barracks, through every grueling day of training, through every sleepless night under the stars.
And then, just one month before my military graduation, my father passed away. I never got to hear his goodbye.
The memory cuts deeper than any wound: I left our home that day with him waiting by the gate, watching me go, full of pride and unspoken words. I came back months later, no longer greeted by his tired but smiling face. Instead, I found myself standing at his grave, waiting for him — a soldier at attention before a father who would never answer back.
I am a soldier now, just as he wanted. But he is gone.
All the awards and recognitions, all the salutes, all the parades feel hollow without him. Every march I make, every oath I renew, echoes with the memory of the goodbye we never had.
Still, I march forward. Not just as a soldier, but as a son carrying a legacy. In every uniform I wear, in every mission I undertake, I carry the weight of his unspoken dreams and the pride he never got to fully express. Though he is no longer here to see me become the man he hoped I’d be, I promise to serve this country with the honor, integrity, and resilience he instilled in me. I will be the soldier he dreamed of being — not just for the nation, but for him. My oath is not only to the flag, but to the memory of the man who stood as the pillar behind the brave.
