Last Week in ColombiaFiveo1

I spoke to my daughter today. Sunshine. The call bounced off another phone hotspot. WhatsApp is the best way to talk while I travel. She told me she's getting married in a week. I just learned that she was engaged last month. It has been a year and two months since I was sentenced to seven years in a Colombian prison.

I remember her birth. Nineteen years old. Broke. Working insane hours as a dock worker. Ten to twelve hours on. Eight hours off. Day and night. An hour commute each way. Seven days a week. A walking zombie. I remember the first time she rolled over on her own. Looked up at me with those piercing blue eyes. Waved her arms in a silent gesture to be held. I was sunk from that moment on. My daughter. My world.

But that was then. My daughter and I have a strained relationship. She has chosen not to speak with me anymore. I respect that completely. She is an admirable adult. Intelligent. Capable of making decisions in her life that are unassociated with me. That is her right. I try to call once a week anyway. Sometimes she answers. Sometimes she doesn't. Today she did.

She told me about the wedding over WhatsApp. The call cut out twice. The hotspot bounced. Her voice crackled through the speakers of a smuggled phone that the police failed to find during the last raid. "Dad," she said. "I'm getting married next week." I said it was wonderful because it is. Her life moves forward. It should. I made my choices. She makes hers.

I have made many bad decisions in my life. The car. The locks. The borders crossed without papers. The fights I should have walked away from. But the decision that hurts the most is not being there for her. Not because I chose to abandon her. Because I chose a path that led me here. To this cell. To this hammock. To this phone call that should have been a hug.

She asked when I would get out. I told her I didn't know. The sentence was seven years. But with good behavior? With appeals? With the chaotic, unpredictable machine that is the Colombian justice system? I didn't know. She said, "Okay, Dad. I love you." I said I loved her too. The call dropped.

I lay in my hammock for a long time after that. The cell was loud — it was always loud — but I didn't hear any of it. I heard her voice. I heard her say "Dad." I heard her say "I love you." And I heard myself say nothing about walking her down the aisle. Her wedding will come and go without me. That is the consequence of my choices. Not hers. Mine.

She is still my daughter. I am still her father. That does not change. But the relationship — the day-to-day, the phone calls, the presence — that is her choice now. I honor it.

I wrote this on a smuggled phone in Envigado. I had been there fourteen months. Seven years sentenced. No idea when I would get out. I did not know that I would be released on March 18, 2026. I did not know that I would walk out of Bella Vista and across Venezuela and into Nicaragua. I did not know that I would still be writing these words, still carrying this weight, still missing her wedding from the other side of the world. That is the truth. I do not ask for sympathy. I only state the fact. Choices were made. Consequences followed. Life continues.