On my birthday, my dad turned to me in front of everyone, looked straight into my eyes, and said, “I wish you were never born.” Something inside me shattered. The next morning, I didn’t argue or cry. I packed my bags, withdrew my savings, found a new place… and disappeared without looking back.
My name is Tula Meadows.
I’m 28.
“I wish you were never born.” My father said that at my own birthday dinner in front of 43 people.
The candles on the cake were still lit. Nobody moved.
Nobody said a word.
My stepmother nodded like he’d just confirmed the weather forecast. My half-sister pointed her phone at my face and kept recording.
That was four months ago.
Since then, I haven’t raised my voice.
I haven’t cried in front of a single person.
But I did something that made my father call me 17 times in one night. And by the 18th call, his voice wasn’t angry anymore.
It was begging.
Before I go on, please take a moment to like and subscribe, but only if you genuinely connect with this story. Drop a comment with your city and what time it is where you are right now.
Now, let me take you back to three days before my birthday—the night I found out what the party was really for.
I need you to understand something about the Meadows family before any of this makes sense.
My father, Gerald Meadows, is 58.
Broad shoulders, deep voice, the kind of man who walks into a room and expects everyone to rearrange themselves around him.
For as long as I can remember, he was the center of every holiday table, every family gathering, every decision.
No one questioned Gerald. Not once.
My mother, Emily, died when I was eight.
Complications after a surgery. Something that went wrong months after she had me.
I didn’t understand it then.
I barely understand it now.
But what I understood early—what I felt in every silence, every skipped bedtime story, every look my father gave me when he thought I wasn’t watching—was this:
He blamed me.
He never said it out loud. Not back then. He didn’t need to.
It lived in the things he didn’t do.
He didn’t come to my school plays. He didn’t hang my drawings on the fridge.
When I got the flu in fourth grade, it was my grandmother, Eleanor, who drove forty minutes to pick me up.
Not him.
Eleanor was my father’s mother. She was the only person in that house who made me feel like I had a right to exist.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
