“You will be okay” he says, looking at me with his bright, light blue eyes. After I ran upstairs crying, and hid myself under the fuzzy black blankets on my bed, my dad had knocked on the white wooden door to talk to me. His words are the strongest, the only words that blow away thunder in my head and let the sun shine through the clouds again. My eyes are still red from the salty tears dropping on my cheeks, starting forty minutes ago when I drove away from school. The roads were grey and cold, making my brain feel like it was flipping around on a trampoline. I was determined that I was not going to graduate after the test I had to take, it was laying in front of me for what seemed to be an eternity. The white paper gave me a cutting headache, and my lack of knowledge made my heartbeat race with the second.
My dad’s words, those four magical words, are the only thing I need. I yearn for his mouth to open and let the cold breeze over my heart disappear. I don’t know why my dad is the only one who can convince me that I will be fine, maybe because I know that he is not going to make things prettier than they are. If he tells me that I will be okay, then I know I will.

When I look at my dad, I see a man; a soccer playing, beer drinking, not-willing-to-talk-about-his-feelings kind of man. It’s rare for him to explain in words what he feels inside, confirmation of his approval is not to be found in spoken language, but in body language. I can see a little spark in his eyes when I talk to him at skype, and I can hear a different tone in his voice when I hear him talk about me to his friends. When my dad does show his emotions in spoken language, I will record that exact moment in my head, and rewind it over and over again.
“I am proud of you” he says, looking down to the ugly concrete tiles near my high school. He seemed shy when he said it, like he had to bundle all the courage in his body to get those five words over his lips. I hand him my perfect green colored diploma as the corners of my mouth curl up in a huge smile. Just a few words like that can be stuck in my mind like graffiti on a wall, you can try to wash it off but it will never completely disappear.

When I think about my dad, I see him encouraging me at the sideline of the soccer field. His grey hair still wet from the shower he took after his own soccer game thirty minutes before. Clear dark blue jeans, no sweatpants like the rest of his team, my dad doesn’t even own sweatpants. His brown leather shoes all dirty because of the mud and wet, dead grass. I notice right away when my dad is standing at the side lines, I can feel his eyes burn in my back. He always says that my biggest flaws are not my actions but my mindset. The words “I can’t do it” are always on the tip of my tongue, where no negativity is my dad’s only rule. Over the last years, that rule has shaped me into a more positive and happy person.
My dad is a person I look up to, I learn from him every day. I am a hundred percent sure that my life would not be this good without my dad’s techniques of convincing me and calming me down, without the marks he leaves behind on my mind, and without his positive influence he brings to me every moment of the day. My dad is my hero.