My parents do not know who I am.

It’s been a decade and four years since my mother hugged

me, and just about the same number of years since my father has bothered to tell me “happy birthday.”

They both live in different countries now, leading completely separate lives, but the symptoms

of their separation still linger. My earliest memory of them together was at three years old. They were

fighting. I cling to that moment every time I remember it, every time I recall having a family that was

not borrowed but my own.

However, ironically, I call her “mommy” whenever we’re on the phone, and I call him

“daddy” on the occasions I see him. My older siblings spent their childhood in the nuclear home but

don’t bother with the titles. They prefer to refer to them by their actual names. It’s more fitting for me

too, don’t you think?

I say my parents do not know me because if I were minus three years from my age and told

my father I am fourteen, he would believe me. He couldn’t tell you my Christian name with a gun to

his head, and to ask him the school I attend would completely transcend the knowledge he has of me.

And my mother still thinks that I’m the three-year-old she left behind. The three-year-old that was

crying for her return.

The American Dream didn’t favour her though. She learned that the hard way. We learned that

the hardest way. Fourteen years away and still… nothing. Sometimes I wonder how different my life

would be if she had stayed. Would daddy know my name? Would my aunts and the millions of other

people I’ve lived with still mistreat me? Would I be as unenthusiastic to speak to her as I am now

when she’s over the phone? What aspects of my life would change?

I have come to the conclusion, though, that I do not know them either. Yes, I know their

birthdays and middle names, but not their favourite colour or what foods they like to eat. Our

relationship is scarily formal. What would we talk about in a thirty-minute conversation? I am a

stranger to them. My parents are strangers to me.