The Father Who Devoured His Son

Fellas

Before we talk about fatherhood, we have to talk about fear. The kind that turns love into control. It begins as care, then hardens into caution, then into distance.

Every father faces the moment when his desire to protect becomes what builds walls between him and his child. That is the paradox of fatherhood; what breaks you can also shape you.

This is where our story begins. With a father who’s lost the rhythm of daily life. Who used to be the one his son called first but now hears stories secondhand.

Birthdays get shared, holidays get negotiated. He tells himself it’s fine. That space is healthy, but when his son starts turning to someone else for advice, something inside him blackens.

I’m being replaced. Not by another man, but by time, and distance. By the slow fading of belonging. The Greeks understood it thousands of years ago.

They gave it a name:

Cronus

Among the Titans stood Cronus, the god of time. Tall, broad-shouldered, crowned not with glory, but with vigilance.

He was the son of Uranus, the Sky, who had ruled through tyranny. And it was Cronus himself who had ended that rule. He took a sickle in his hand and cut down his father to free the world from his oppression.

But when the prophecy came that he too, would be overthrown by his own children something stirred in him. Panic. The same anxiety that had haunted his father. The same dread that would now rule him.

He told himself he was protecting order. That the world could not survive another revolt. And so, when his wife Rhea gave birth, he came to her side not as a husband, but as a warden of fate.

She held the infant Zeus. Trembling with awe at the miracle she had brought into the world, and with terror at the prophecy that the man she loved would destroy it.

Cronus took the child in his arms, pressed the tiny body against his chest, and then swallowed him whole. He repeated this ritual for each son and daughter that followed. Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon.

Zeus would one day rise and overthrow his father, freeing his siblings and taking the throne for himself, but the cycle did not end there.

In his reign, Zeus too would turn on his own children fearing their power, cursing their defiance, repeating the same story beneath a new sky.

When a father cannot confront his own shadow, he passes it on as inheritance.

He consumes what he should cultivate.

And when a son cannot forgive the father, he repeats him. This is how the cycle survives. And so, the next generation inherits more than a name; it inherits the unfinished business of the men who came before.

Their convictions, their absence, their unspoken rules. Ancient forces that walk beside each one of us.

Silence, who starves connection; Expectation, who whispers that love must be earned. Fear, who guards the gates of vulnerability. Delay, who promises there’s still time and Numbness, who lulls the heart into forgetting it can still feel.

They aren’t monsters, they’re more than that. They are merciless. And they must be faced.

Expectation -

The Greeks tell the story of Pygmalion, a sculptor who carved a statue so flawless he fell in love with it. Day after day, he polished her marble skin, shaped her hands, perfected her form. He named her Galatea, and prayed to Aphrodite to bring her to life.

The goddess granted his wish. The statue became flesh. Yet even then, Pygmalion could not truly love her as she was. He loved her as he imagined her to be, flawless, obedient. What he wanted wasn’t a partner, but proof that his vision of love was right.

We don’t set out to devour our sons with Expectation at our side. It tells us we’re doing what good fathers do. We wish to see them become strong, disciplined, and wise. You want him to do well, to avoid the mistakes that nearly broke you.

But sometimes, we start shaping instead of seeing. Correcting instead of connecting, turning affection into achievement.

When your love becomes conditional on success, he stops reaching for your approval and starts fearing your disappointment. Then Expectation steps between you and your child and whispers to him that love must be earned.

What to Do instead:

Silence - The Devourer of Connection

Orpheus was a man whose music could charm the gods themselves, but it wasn’t power he sought, it was reunion. When his wife Eurydice died, he followed her into the underworld and struck a bargain with Hades. She could return to life if he led her out without looking back.

But halfway to the surface, the sound of her footsteps faded. Doubt crept in. He strained to hear her, to trust that she was still there. When the echo disappeared, the silence became unbearable.

What if she’s gone? The thought hollowed him. He turned, desperate for proof that he hadn’t been walking alone. And in that single act of disbelief, he lost her forever.

That’s how Silence works. It doesn’t kill love outright; it makes us question it until we do.

Many fathers mistake silence for strength. We tell ourselves that restraint is maturity, that holding back keeps peace. For separated fathers, silence often feels safer than rejection.

You wait for the right moment to speak, the perfect words to say. But the longer you wait, the heavier it grows. What begins as space becomes distance; what began as patience became absence.

Orpheus didn’t lose Eurydice because he stopped loving her; he lost her because he couldn’t bear the silence long enough to trust love itself. Don’t lose connection the same way. In the quiet.

You don’t need perfect words. You just need presence. The kind that sounds like, “I miss you,” or “I’m still here.” Your child doesn’t need a flawless father. They need a living one. One whose voice proves that love still breathes.

Silence devours love not by what it says, but by what it withholds:

Fear and Delay - The Long Way Home

Silence is the child of Fear and Delay, raised in the space between what we feel and what we say. The fear of saying too much. Of saying it wrong. Saying it too late.

That’s when Delay enters; dressed as patience, disguised as strategy. You tell yourself you’re waiting for the right time, but time isn’t waiting for you.

There’s a kind of stillness that takes over. A father sitting with his phone in his hand, thumb hovering over the screen. The message is simple: Hey, how are you? But he rewrites it three times. Deletes it twice. He tells himself he doesn’t want to sound desperate. He tells himself he’ll text tomorrow…

That’s how Fear and Delay work.
Fear makes you flinch. Delay tells you it’s okay to wait. Together, they devour time.

Fear says, “What if he doesn’t answer?”
Delay says, “Then wait until you know what to say.”

And both sound reasonable, that’s their trick.

Look at Odysseus, twenty years to go home. Not because he didn’t love his family, but because every delay made sense at the time. Every detour had a reason. Every hesitation had a story.

That’s what Fear and Delay do to fathers. They turn love into navigation. You circle the same waters, convincing yourself you’re finding the right route, when you’ve just stopped moving.

Each reason sounds noble; each delay feels justified. But they lead to the same tragedy. Love postponed until it begins to fade. Odysseus didn’t find peace until he stopped sailing around the storm and faced it.

Connection doesn’t need courage first. Just motion. The message doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be sent. Because your child isn’t waiting for the right words.

What to Do next:

Numbness - The Lull of Forgetting

The Greeks spoke of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.
Every soul that crossed into the underworld drank from it before being reborn.

The water washed away every memory. Love, loss, failure, triumph. Until nothing remained. Peaceful, yes. But empty.

That’s what Numbness offers, peace without presence.

Not the loud collapse of anger or fear, but the quiet surrender that comes after. You stop reaching. You stop dreaming. You tell yourself, I’m fine. 

The calendar goes unchecked for visitation weekends. You stop taking pictures when you’re together. His laugh becomes harder to remember.

Life folds into routine. Work, sleep, repeat. Until one day you look up, and years have slipped by without you noticing.

Numbness doesn’t erase pain; it just buries it:

Here’s what the Greeks didn’t tell you. There was another river beside Lethe. Mnemosyne, the river of memory. The souls who drank from it remembered everything. The light, the loss, and the lessons. They carried their story forward instead of letting it vanish.

You can’t build connection if you forget what it’s for. You can’t love your child fully if you’re half asleep inside your own life.

Fatherhood was never meant to be a performance of perfection; it’s the act of remembering.

Remembering that love isn’t control, that silence isn’t peace, that time doesn’t heal what we refuse to feel.

You find your way back not by erasing the pain, but by letting it remind you what still matters.

So wake up. Step out of the river. Remember who you are.

You’ve wrestled with gods older than time, and walked through the hardest parts of yourself to make it here.

And that kind of strength outlives everything that tried to break it.

Until next time

Barkim