I was sitting on the couch when my 6-year-old son came up to me, asking for a hug. I froze. Lately, his neediness had been overwhelming, and I was frustrated.
I told him, “I’m not in the mood for a hug right now, buddy.”He paused, then suddenly whispered, “It’s okay. Mommy says you don’t really love me anyway.”
It hit me like a brick to the chest. He wasn’t angry or even sad—just matter-of-fact, like he’d accepted it.
I blinked at him, trying to process what I just heard. “What did you say?” I asked, sitting up straight. He looked down at his socks, toes wriggling into the carpet.
“Nothing. I’ll go play in my room.”
My stomach flipped. I’d been divorced from his mom, Anara, for about a year.
Things had been civil at first—joint custody, polite texts about school pickups, the usual rhythm of a broken family trying to hold it together. But in the last few months, something had shifted. My son, Kavi, had started pulling away.
Not dramatically—just small things. Less eye contact. Less laughter.
More cautiousness, like he was constantly checking if it was okay to be himself around me. I sat there for a moment, unable to move. Then I went to his room.
Kavi was lying on his bed with his toy elephant tucked under one arm. I sat beside him, gently. “Hey,” I said.
“Can we talk for a sec?”
He nodded, still looking at the wall. “You said something earlier. About Mommy saying I don’t love you.
Did she really say that?”
He shrugged, still not meeting my eyes. “She just says stuff sometimes. Like how you didn’t want me anyway.”
I swear my heart cracked in half.
That night, after he fell asleep, I stood in the hallway for what felt like hours. Every part of me was screaming. I’d messed up.
Not just today, but for months. I’d let the exhaustion of co-parenting and my own resentment toward Anara turn me into a version of myself I didn’t even recognize. The next morning, I called in sick to work and took Kavi out for pancakes.
We didn’t talk much at first. But when his mouth was full of whipped cream and strawberries, I tried again. “I love you, Kavi.
More than anything in the whole world.”
He gave me a crooked little smile and said, “Okay.” But his eyes didn’t quite believe me. I knew this wouldn’t be fixed with pancakes or one nice morning. It was deeper than that.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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