The ugly weed that flourished a beautiful flower: a son and father story

(I know, you already scrolled all the way down, and yes, it's a long story. But I promise you will get into the story as you keep reading it haha) 

I was fourteen years old and I didn't know who I was. I was letting the people I met in the street define me. 

I have had a weak relationship with both my parents lately. The past 5 months, after coming from U.S I had been constantly grounded for bad behavior at school. I was scared to hold a conversation with my dad, and I was always mad at my mom. I was insecure, and my personality was always changing depending who I was with. I wanted to be a cool guy so I joined a group of people that only had fun on a Friday night if they started a street fight. I was feeling older and immune to any consequence in the street. But at home, I couldn't even look at my dad in his eyes.

It was 2:00 pm on an afternoon of October, I was in the car with my dad. He was mad, sad, and heartbroken. I was speech lees, mad at my self, and I couldn't get rid of the image of my mom crying. 

Hours before, my dad had received a call from my school saying that I had violated an important rule of my school and that the faculty was going to have a meeting to discuss whether or not I should get kicked from school.

In the car neither my dad or I were talking, in the air we both could feel an intense silence that would cut any word that I could possibly throw out of my mouth.

I didn't know where he was taking me. I was in the front seat besides him, looking at his sad face every once in a while, and thinking that this whole scene was dream, that it was a scheme from the universe to learn a lesson, that I had never violated that rule , that I had never had been caught, that my mother never cried because her son was taking the wrong steps in life, and that my father wasn't there his sad face, and driving the car with me. 

Suddenly, tears came out of my eyes.

I whipped my tears off my face.

None of that was a dream, it was actually  happening. Some days before, I had heard that a guy I used to hung out with in the street was kicked out of his house by his parents. I was dying inside, I was thinking I could get kicked out of my house too. But outside, everything seemed normal. Through the car window, I could see the same old lady begging for money under the traffic light of the road, the same amount of people walking on the side walk, and the bright sun of Colombia shinning above us. 

I was horrified. I was fourteen years old, and the past months of my life had been full of disappointments for my parents with my behavior. 

We arrived to a hotel, we sat by the pool on a table under the shadow of a tree. 

My dad looked at me, he didn't say anything. I started crying.

He was looking at me with such a heart broken face. Though, with a tender gaze that told me without words that he loved me. 

He asked me to explain him what happened, I started telling him with my face full of tears that a "friend" talked me into violating that rule and I did it because everyone was doing it.

After some minutes of talking, and an orange juice, I stopped crying. And what I thought was another lecture about my behavior, it became the first deep conversation about life with my dad. 

And what once was a feeling of fear, it became a feeling of belonging, and love. 

I was vulnerable, he was heartbroken. I was scared of being kicked out of the house, he was scared of loosing me. 

He was sad, I was crying. 

And that day, under the shadow of the tree, on a table by the pool of a hotel, the worst brought the best. In the lowest point of my relationship with my parents, a gaze full of love, and some tears full of pain, started to build the beginning of the greatest learning experience of my life. 

My dad started to tell me about life, and the main purpose of living, which is being happy and making others happy. He told me how any addiction would steal from me the greatest things we have as humans, our ability to be free and make choices. He said that freedom was love, and love was the key of a happy life. 

That honest conversation full of understanding made me open my eyes and see the reality. For the first time in many years I looked at my dad's eyes without fear and I saw in his gaze how much he loved me.

And that afternoon of October, around 3:00 pm, my dad saved my life. 

And that day, under the shadow of that tree, it started to grow a relationship full of love, comprehension, and learning between me and my dad.