THE STORMS WITHIN

The power of words...

There comes a day in a man's life that changes him. Forever. That day is the day he becomes a father. Be it for one, two, or half a dozen children. Something changes in him that day. It opens a door that he did not know existed in his heart. There also comes another day in a man's life. A day he realizes that his child had grown, that it is ready to spread wings, that it is ready to make it on their own. But there is another day, one that no father wishes for: a day he realizes that he made a mistake when it comes to a child that becomes his own not by blood, but by love. Because such a mistake lays heaviest on his heart. Heavier because of the burden of his own words...

If there was one thing that could be said about Nihat Aydin it would be that he loved his beloved wife Mevkibe more than life itself. He loved for the daughters she bestowed upon him. He loved her for the food she prepared with a hand of a magician - it never failed to reach all the way up to his heart. But there was one reason that mattered to him more than others. There was one reason why he never looked away, why he never left her side. And that reason was her virtue of forgiveness. They have been married for many years. Many beautiful years. And many times during those years their love had been tested. There were many examples of that, but none in his heart compared to the one day that his heart almost broke in half, all because of his own words...

The day that Nihat found out about Can and Sanem's accident his life changed. Because his heart changed that day - forever...

He was angry with Can. Which father wouldn't be. Can fled after Yigit's accident. But that was not how Nihat saw it. To Nihat, Can abandoned Sanem. He forsaken her. He rejected her love and their future together. And he did not just leave behind the person who loved him. He left behind his fiancè. And that, to Nihat, was inexcusable. Where Can may have been raised in a way that paid little attention to family values or traditions, the Aydins relied on it to raise their family right. Nihat always felt that Mevkibe trusted Can too fast and too easily. But the moment Can turned to Nihat during his birthday party and asked him for permission to ask Sanem to marry him, Nihat's heart opened up. And it welcomed Can as his son. Not just as his son-in-law, but as his son. A son he never had. Tried as he might, Nihat never felt the same way about Emre as he did about Can. He did not question it, he just accepted it. Can was the first man he trusted with his daughter with, and it would always remain that way...

When Can left, something happened within Nihat himself. It broke his faith as a father. It broke his trust in Can. It made him believe that he entrusted his daughter's life to the wrong man. And that was not easy for him to accept. Nihat knew he was not a man without fault himself. No man ever was. But a man did not give up on his family. Ever. Can may have come into their family as someone who wanted to belong with them. Someone who went out of his way to make sure Sanem was cared for. But the more he came around, the more his footsteps stayed in the Aydin household. And in their hearts. Because Sanem wasn't the only one who started to love him. They came to accept and love him as well.

As a father, Nihat's heart feared for Sanem long before Can proposed to her. Their relationship even put a strain on his marriage to Mevkibe. But they got through it. And he believed they could get through anything and everything, because he believed Can when Can chose to promise to Sanem that he would always take care of her during his proposal. When Can left, Nihat's broken trust hit him just as hard as it hit Sanem. Can chose to leave behind someone who put her whole heart in his hands. Because of it, Sanem had no heart left in her body. No heart left to breathe, no heart left to dream, no heart left to make herself want to live. The months, weeks, days, minutes, seconds without Can were never ending - to all of them. To Nihat, seeing Sanem suffer the way she did was a constant reminder of Can's cowardice as well as Nihat's own failure. He felt like a failure because he failed to protect his little girl from the one pain he promised himself to protect her from on the day she was born.