Nine years had passed before I set foot in the country I called home for my entire childhood. A combination of bad decisions, unresolved resentment and overall negative situations kept me away, or let's say not motivated to go back too soon.

   It's not really a secret that my relationship with my father has not always been a healthy one. You see, in his eyes I was probably the one kid who could make the mistakes he did, the one child he wanted to help the most, in his own way. I was the rebel, the musician, the poet, the dreamer, simply put: the one that question the path that was told to me I had to follow.

What Engineering Career do you want?

   I'm a year away from graduating high school, and this is how the conversation got started. It's not if I want to be an Engineer, it's not if I even want to go to college (yeah I know, but that's another post altogether). The question was simply "What kind of Engineer do you want to be?"

   I'm not upset about this, at least not anymore. In the mind of my father the only way to triumph in life is to graduate from a prestigious university with an Engineering degree, get a job and work your way to wealth. The problem is, I did not see it that way, and I still don't.

But you like computers!!

   And I still do, as a matter of fact, there is not a day that goes by that I don't use them to make a living. But I still don't think the choice was not mine to make. I did trick myself, and even gave it a good go, at age 17 I got into a prestigious University and took all the calculus & physics classes a human could ever need. I'm good at math, I actually like it, but I did not want to be an Engineer... for What? for Who?

   I remember vividly as if it happened yesterday a dream-destroying conversation I once had with an Engineer. You see, I took an internship position one summer at a software firm, and helped develop some php/mysql applications. I found it fun, the challenge kept me engaged, and maybe the fact that there was no money involved kept my emotions removed.

   The head Engineer of the project impressed with my coding skills asked me where I was going to study. I remember saying... "Well... I've been thinking of moving to the US, and following a musical career".... she laughed, she thought I was joking, and I played it off as if I was... I was embarrassed.

So I left...

   Why would I stay? nothing had gone right, I was not happy and to top it off, the title I was pursuing was going to hang on a wall just to boost my dad's ego. So, I took a leap of faith, I left, and the six months to follow after I arrived in LA were some of the darkest times in my life, but all I could think of was... "Well at least now.... now... I'm the one in control..."

   I think the story after those events can be guessed, even by people who just stumble on this post and know nothing about me. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes, but with time things worked themselves out somehow.

I missed home.. or

   At the very least I needed closure, I needed to find out if I had grown up... So I decided to go back, just to visit, just shy of a decade later. I decided it was time to have a conversation with my father, to let him know that even though I probably will never truly understand him, I still wanted what was best for him, and at the very least for him to see me as me.

I think he found the book by accident

   But when he gifted me this little book, I knew he did not see me as the little kid who refused to grow up. He did not see a rebel who just wanted to go against his father's wishes.. he just didn't know how to say this to me with words.

   So he gave me this little book... and it said it all...

(credit for the video to: Facing History and Ourselves youtube channel)