Exactly like my father

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from childhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The wise are not bewildered by this.” — Bhagavad Gita 2.13

The reflection I wrote about what is happening inside me sounds exactly like my late father. He destroyed relationships around him and always made it seem as if he had done nothing wrong.

Everyone in the family keeps telling me that I am exactly like him—manipulative, unable to stay in one place for long—and that it is no surprise I cannot hold a job for very long.They give me an extreme example to force me to reflect: a man who killed ten people, ruined families, and still believes he did nothing wrong. He sits in jail asking who the policeman was who arrested him, and plans revenge instead of understanding his crime. He cannot comprehend why a child cried when he killed the child’s father. That blindness is what they accuse me of having.I thought I had escaped this pattern when I left my old workplace.

I believed removing myself from that environment meant I was done with it. But the same damage keeps appearing in different forms. Relationships with others still break around me, and the same accusations return. The problem follows me.Sometimes I wonder if I have always mixed with the wrong people. Other times I fear the truth is worse—that I am repeating my father’s habits without realizing it. When he got into trouble, he would pray constantly, as if someone would come and rescue him while he took no responsibility himself.

I see traces of that in me, and I hate it.I do not understand why I am still copying his worst traits. I hate when people say I am exactly like my father. I hate that sentence more than anything. I hate the reflection that suggests I am destined to become him, even though I know I do not want to be.What scares me most is facing people honestly—without defenses, without disappearing, without blame.

And I am not sure what it would take for me to do that.Sometimes it feels easier to believe I should not talk to anyone at all, not form relationships, and slowly fade into the background. To live quietly in my own home like something placed in cold storage—present, but untouched. Unnoticed. As if I do not exist, and no one remembers me.