From Hate Flourishes Love

Show Me A Gambler And I'll Show You My Father

🅚🅐🅘

A few long minutes of my mom crying and me relentlessly trying to get her to calm down passed before I decided to give up on getting her to tell me what was wrong.

She won't be able to give me an intelligible response. I turn my attention to my father so that he can shed light on why Mom is so shaken up.

I throw him a pestering look, challenging the answer out of him.

I notice him biting his nails, and scratching behind his ear. Noting his nervous tics, I hope on my lucky star that it had nothing to do with his gambling obsession.

Before my suspicion completely consumes me, I force an answer out of him.

"Will you tell me what's wrong?" I demand.

"So today, I went by a new casino." He says. And with his words, my hope goes out the window.

I furrow my brows in deep worry about what he could've done, but I let him continue, waiting to face the worst news.

"I was playing blackjack," he starts. "I was winning at first but then the stakes kept getting higher, and I started to lose money. I was sure I'd be able to win if I had more money so I went
into your mom's and my joint savings account."

I don't like where he is going with this story.

He continues, "But I wasn't able to win any of the money back so I had to go into the account your mom and I opened for you, but I ended up losing everything." He hangs his head in embarrassment.

When he looks at me — I search his eyes to see if he's lying. I wish on that lucky star of mine that he's pranking me.

My heart stopped, hearing his confession knowing that my father didn't once think about my future before squandering the money I had saved up for years, so I would help myself through grad school. And my dad had blown it away like nothing - in one day.

Guess I learned a good lesson about who should have access to your bank account. I was too young to have an account for myself so I had to open an account with my parents. Five years of working at the bakery were down the drain.

I felt heavy tears rolling down my cheeks. This was possibly the worst day of my life.

My dad looks up from his lap with quilt-filled eyes.

"And?" I sigh, urging him to continue his story.

"There was a chance I would win back the money so I borrowed a loan from the casino." He sobs.

I sneer at him. His tears couldn't get back the money.

"How much did you borrow?" I hiss. I brace myself hoping that the loan wasn't above 50k.

"Two million dollars." He replies.

"What?"

'What' is the only word that would I manage to get out of my mouth at his answer.

I scoff. 

He must have added a few extra digits to amount in shock. Which sensible business establishment would lend my dad so much money? I think positively, maybe he didn't learn about significant figures in school, and the two zeros after the decimal point don't fit into the number.