Watching his retreating back, I had a hard time not letting my tears flow.

I couldn't stand mom's soft sobs from her room so I screamed for her to just shut up. I slammed the door and switched on my stereo and set the volume to the loudest it could go as Evanescence's 'Going Under' belted out from the speakers.

What is it that makes men so eager to separate with the women who revere them and put them on a pedestal? Is it so hard to see a wrinkle or two spread through her once pretty face? Is it a crime to have a slight bulge in the tummy area just because her metabolism is slowly deteriorating? What do they expect - their fifty-year-old wives maintain the same figure they had thirty years ago? To have faces like supermodels? To have no brains?

Men would wrinkle someday too. Then, would they expect their twenty-year-old brides to be true to them?

What is wrong with the man? What flaw does he see in the woman who has been in love with him for thirty years? Who waited patiently by the sidelines as he went from woman to woman since grade school? Who would gladly give her life for him to live longer?

My father was not a complicated man yet I still puzzle over why he could just leave an eighteen year old marriage, a wife and three children who adored him and whose footsteps they wanted to follow?

Did he not remember the fact that my mother had slaved for five years without him when his one business trip that took him everywhere around the world (or so he claimed)? Did he not remember that because she had worked herself so hard that she almost went into a coma trying to raise their three precocious children while living and fighting an arduous battle with cancer?

And to think…I used to kiss the ground he walked on!

God…I used to think he was someone I could look up to, someone I could depend on and to look for someone with the same qualities as my future husband. I thought he was someone on whom I could base my opinions about men. Yet…sadly, he turned out to be one of the men I thought was scum.

Ironically, it wasn't the fact that he walked out on us that hurt the most. No…it wasn't that. It was the fact that before he left, he tried to buy our love with expensive presents and he even introduced us to his new woman, a widow, and her child! That hurt so badly.

When he left the night he introduced us to that woman, Hayden, my youngest brother, looked at mom and smiled with tears silently rolling down his cheeks. "That woman's child called him papa."

As for me and my middle brother Johnny, we were glad the man was gone. For five years - five long and tiring years - we waited for him and he came back with this news? We couldn't believe that we planned so many things with the man but now we had to cancel them because of this…new addition… to the family! No…I don't even want to call them that. That woman doesn't deserve to be part of our family. If that man can just easily discard us, then we can easily discard him and his new woman and child.

When I found out about what that man did, it took every single cell in my body not to scream out that he was such a heartless scumbag. My mother was as good as any woman can get, if not far better, yet he was still dissatisfied with her, even when she had catered to his every whim for thirty years! Despite the fact that she gave him three kids when his new woman couldn't even bear another child anymore, he could still stay with his new woman just because she "is too strong-headed and just wouldn't let me go". Yeah…the hickey you came back with the night you were drunk just proves that point, father. I say that with venom and sarcasm dripping in every single letter.

My God…how does he live with himself knowing that my mother could just collapse at any time with her failing heart and growing cancer? How could he still stay with that woman when his first wife and supposed "first love" was dying?

All the heroic stories he used to tell me as a child which used to be so poignant now seemed so empty. It didn't bear anymore meaning to me how he used to start the stories with "When I was young, I used to…". Bravery and chivalry were the main theme of the stories he told me. Now I know that he was just lying through his teeth to make me love, respect and revere him.

What a coward.

And as I thought about all of this…I realised that the man was not worth my tears. I shouldn't waste any time on the man who practically destroyed my mom and his used-to-be family. And as a strong young woman, I have to stand up and resume my position as mother, father and eldest sibling figure in the family. They needed me.

I washed my face and switched off my stereo before walking out of the room with a straight face.

The thought I had when I left that room was this.

He was my hero…now, he is and always will be my destroyer.