I used to tell my father he was a failure.

Not in a moment of anger, not once or twice — but over and over, in a hundred small, cutting ways I thought were just “being honest.”

“If you’re such a failure, why did you have four kids?” I’d snap, standing in the kitchen of our peeling house while he unlaced his steel-toed boots.

He would just smile. A tired, quiet smile that never quite reached his eyes.

“I’ll try to do better, kiddo,” he’d say. “You just keep studying.”

I was convinced I saw him clearly.

He worked three jobs.

Not three impressive, LinkedIn-worthy careers.

Three uniforms. Three name tags.

Day shift at a warehouse. Evenings mopping office buildings. Weekends delivering pizzas in a beat-up car that rattled when he turned the ignition.

I told myself he’d made every wrong choice. That he was proof of what happened if you didn’t aim higher.

So I aimed higher.