You’d think a soap bar gifted by your dad would be the least of your problems, right? Wrong. Amelia learned the hard way when her boyfriend uncovered the horrifying truth about her dad’s peculiar present.
There’s always been this love-hate thing with my dad. Usually, it leaned heavily on the love side. But not anymore. Why? Because I’m now questioning everything I ever knew about him.
Growing up as Daddy’s little girl was a blessing or maybe a curse—hindsight has a funny way of twirling things around. I’m 23 now and had my own little cocoon within my parents’ house until recently, when they suddenly transformed into unrecognizable roommates from hell.
My dad, with his ‘melt-your-heart’ inward soft side despite a coconut shell exterior, always had his rules. “Character is built in discomfort,” he’d say the same way he’d hand me chocolate on a moody day. But character-building went to a whole other level with this latest stunt.
Dear ol’ dad claimed my life’s fragrance was akin to a landfill, so he presented me with a bar of soap from another planet. Cold showers, he ordered, as if my life was a renegade army boot camp and I was the sole recruit. Why didn’t mom, my ally and pasta chef, object? Things were strangely silent in Camp Awkward.
But the clincher came with Dad’s ultimatum: “You smell horrible, go take a cold shower and use the soap I gave you!” And in an instant, my once-peaceful bubble became the scene of an unexplained horror film. Parents who once doted became critics of every decibel I created and every dollar I spent. It’s all fun and games until someone pulls out the industrial-strength soap!
Apparently, my alleged body odor was so offensive, the gods of cleanliness had to intercede with divine soap intervention. Enter: the weirdest chunk of soap mankind has known. It looked alien and emitted a bizarre bouquet. Was this Dad’s twisted way of building character, or just a crazy new trend?
Of course, this misery needed company and eventually, an unsuspecting boyfriend was dragged into the mayhem. Henry, my green-flag boyfriend, who had unknowingly been drafted into this soap opera, popped in to witness the circus. He asked if I could come out from hiding, thinking Dracula might be a gentler boyfriend.
Then came the moment he crossed paths with the suspect soap while innocently sifting through my toiletries. Move over, Sherlock Holmes—my boyfriend’s inner detective uncovered a conspiracy I couldn’t even fathom. Rage? Check. Disbelief? That frustration stew continued simmering in my confused heart.
Now he was the one with waterworks—not from the soap, but from realizing their insidiousness. This was no ordinary soap; it assaulted more than grime off machinery. Toxic? Check.
What followed was a fog of disbelief, and the cracks in my family’s wobbly narrative turned into jagged gashes. What kind of revenge episode did Dad get lost in? I was done playing the naïve pawn.
In a cloud of heartbreak and vengeance forged from deep betrayal, I demanded truth. Dad—the benevolent teacher of lessons, he smugly thought—delivered a truth bomb that flipped my existence on its head.
Apparently, a drunken vacation fortune teller decreed my existence to be illegitimate, the love child from an age-old scandal. Father dearest took it as gospel, turning into the avenging anti-hero of our once happy sitcom—without telling the producers.
In the end, this family affair was a poorly directed drama. And me? I took the only Oscars-worthy exit I could once the scene unfolded—a lifestyle change with Henry’s support and a much-needed lawyer.
Yet through the ashes of a broken soap-saga remains a woman, spotted and speckled, but healing with a man worth the sacrifice. Oddly poetic, don’t you think? A mere soap bar changed my trajectory. I lost a dad but cemented the faith in standing up for myself—sometimes that’s stronger than reality tires us to believe.
