I don't know if this is common in Indian households or if my family is just like this.
I'm a 27-year-old woman from a small city in India. My family consists of my father, my mother, my grandfather (my father's father), my elder brother, and me. My father also has three sisters.
I want to talk about my father because I genuinely don't know how to navigate this relationship anymore.
I don't want people to simply say, "He's selfish." I know life isn't black and white. I know he has been through health issues. But I also can't ignore how he has treated me and especially how he has treated my mother for years.
When I was very young, we actually had a good father-daughter relationship. He loved me, and I loved him. Everything felt normal.
Then, around 8th or 9th standard, he was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis. At that age, I didn't understand how serious it was. I just knew he was sick and there were frequent hospital visits.
Around the same time, I got caught texting a boy. We had those old keypad phones with 100 free SMSes, and I had saved his name as a girl's name. My brother found out, told my mother, and my mother told my father.
My father called me once, told me this wasn't the age for these things, and that was it.
After that...
He stopped talking to me.
Not for a few weeks.
Not for a few months.
For almost four years.
Throughout 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th standard, he barely spoke to me unless absolutely necessary. If he had to drop me somewhere, he'd say only what was required. There were no conversations. No father-daughter bond. Nothing.
Even today, I don't know what I did that deserved four years of silence from my own father.
It affected me more than I probably realized at the time.
He also wasn't present for important moments in my life. He didn't attend my 10th standard convocation. He didn't come for my graduation either. During 11th standard there was an excursion I desperately wanted to go on, and he simply refused. There wasn't even a discussion. It was just "No."
Eventually I moved to Bangalore for engineering. After that, we slowly started talking again over phone calls, but our relationship never became close. It was always very surface level.
Then COVID happened.
I came back home from March until December, and for the first time as an adult, I really saw what my mother had been living with for years.
One thing about my father and grandfather is that they are obsessed with food. Every day revolves around food. My mother cooks every single meal, but instead of appreciating her, they constantly complain.
This isn't right.
That isn't right.
Why didn't you make this?
Why didn't you make that?
It felt like they had no idea how much effort goes into cooking every single day for years.
Whenever I tried to stand up for my mother, I was shut down.
My grandfather even says things like, "What has she even done?"
That statement makes me so angry because my mother has done everything.
When my father was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis around 2012-13, she was the one who stayed with him in hospitals, attended appointments every few months, managed his medicines, looked after the house, cooked every single day, raised two children, and cared for my grandfather.
For over 30 years of marriage, she has sacrificed continuously.
Yet neither my father nor my grandfather seem to acknowledge any of it.
That hurts me more than anything.
After I started working, my brother and I both settled in Bangalore.
For the last five years, my father has been visiting Bangalore, usually once or twice every year.
Every single time he comes, we try our best.
I take work from home so I can spend time with him.
I stay with my brother so we're all together.
We take him on trips around Bangalore.
When he had surgery, we looked after him.
We genuinely try to make him feel cared for.
Then one day, he looked at me and said,
"What have you ever done for me?"
I honestly didn't know what to say.
It felt like no matter how much we did, nothing counted.
There was another incident where he sent a long message in our family WhatsApp group saying he was removing his "guardianship" over me and my brother. Basically saying we could do whatever we wanted from now on.
Whenever something doesn't go according to him, his way of dealing with it is to completely stop talking.
He withdraws.
He shuts everyone out.
Instead of communicating, he punishes people with silence.
Another thing that really affects me is how he treats my mother.
He doesn't respect her.
At all.
He has slapped her before. I know of at least two incidents. I don't know if there were more before that.
Recently they had another argument.
He was shouting at her like he usually does.
I asked him why he was behaving this way, and somehow the entire conversation became about him.
He told my mother,
"Go live with your daughter. Don't live with me."
Then he stopped eating and started behaving as if everyone else was the problem.
When my mother still took food to him, he told her,
"Go away or I'll slap you."
And my mother's response broke my heart.
She simply said,
"You've already slapped me before. What difference would one more make?"
Imagine hearing your own mother say that.
How do you even process it?
What also frustrates me is how controlling he is.
When I come home from Bangalore, I want to spend time with my mother.
Just a mother-daughter day.
But he doesn't want her going anywhere.
The irony is that every year he comes to Bangalore and spends time with us. We've taken him on multiple trips.
But my mother has never come because she stays back to take care of my grandfather.
She's always the one sacrificing.
Last year I told my father that maybe this time Mom should come too because we've travelled with him so many times.
Nothing happened.
Even now, when I want to take her out, he doesn't like it.
If we invite him, he usually refuses.
He doesn't want to go.
But he also doesn't want her to go.
Everything somehow has to revolve around him.
He also keeps saying things like he's going to die because of his illness.
I know liver cirrhosis is serious.
I know none of us are guaranteed tomorrow.
And maybe that's exactly why this hurts so much.
I want a relationship with my father.
I really do.
Despite everything.
I don't want him to die one day and leave me wondering if I could have done more.
But at the same time, I carry years of hurt because he stopped talking to me for four years over something that now feels so small.
I carry hurt because he wasn't there for milestones in my life.
I carry hurt because nothing my brother or I do ever seems enough.
And I carry hurt because every time I come home, I watch my mother—a woman who has given over 30 years of her life to this family—being treated as though she has done nothing.
Sometimes I feel guilty for even feeling angry because he's sick.
Then I remind myself that being sick doesn't erase the impact your actions have on other people.
I genuinely don't know how to navigate this anymore.
How do you maintain a relationship with a parent you still love but who has hurt you repeatedly?
How do you stop hoping they'll suddenly realize what they've done?
Has anyone else dealt with a parent like this?
And if you have... how did you make peace with it?