I do not remember my childhood as the “best carefree time. I am not a very social person, and growing up around children was terribly uncomfortable for me. As someone who was used to living with my mother and grandmother from birth, it was hard for me to let them go. My grandmother was gone when I was six, and it was very difficult for my mother alone to support me, and she became ill. Already at this point she was trying to get in touch with my birth father to take me in. He had a new family, other children, more related than me, apparently. He didn’t want to take me, and I ended up in an orphanage when my mother’s illness overcame.
I always blamed my father for that. If he hadn’t left the family, things would have been different for us. Mom would have been happy, and so would I. And in the same horrible way, I’d still have someone. But now I’m alone.
After graduating from the orphanage, I had a pretty hard time settling into life. I felt that the fact that I was an orphan did not make a good impression on people. Some people didn’t want to be friends with me when they found out I grew up in an orphanage, and sometimes they wouldn’t hire me for the same reason. I had to study hard to get into law school and be a paralegal later on. Later on I also wanted to start practicing law, and for the sake of trying it out, my mentor assigned me a tiny case. A woman was divorcing her husband and wanted to get everything from him for her children.
My principal told me not to bother, but when I saw the name of the defendant, and when I looked him up in the records and found out that he was my father, I couldn’t “not bother” anymore. After all, I had been looking for him in passing for years, and he himself came to me in a folder with my first case.
The poor woman and her children suffered because of my father. He was a drunkard and often abused himself. He had sold all his second wife’s gold and threatened to mortgage her apartment unless she found a large sum of money for him. Now she was afraid that my father would get her property, including the apartment, divided after the divorce.
What a pleasure it was to prepare, to be nervous, and then to destroy my father, who twice failed to be a diligent family man, in court. The first case already feels like a triumph if you win it, but when it comes to someone like that, it feels a million times more satisfying to win it than someone else.
I don’t think my father recognized me. That’s too bad. I wanted him to figure it out for himself, but after it was over, so I wouldn’t get suspended. Anyway, I hope he gets what he deserves, not just for me and my mom, but for his new family. Everyone needs to get what they deserve, especially when their selfishness ruins other people’s lives.
