Everyone says a girls first love is her father, but not mine. A father is there to protect you, support you, and be everything you need him to be and unfortunately I did not have that. When I was younger I always thought I had done something wrong when my father didn’t want to see me. All I wanted was for my dad to be my super hero, my confidant, best friend, and all he knew how to be was non existent. As a child I didn’t know why my father didn’t want to be around, but as I got older I soon understood.
Being in a single parent home was normal for me at a young age and I really didn’t know that two parents were supposed to be present until one day my mother brought it to my attention. She never spoke negatively about my father, because she knew one day I would understand and dictate how I felt about him based on my personal interactions with him. My mom has always played both roles meaning she was my mother and father. She cooked, cleaned, worked and took care of both my sister and I our whole lives, and as far as my father was concerned well he wasn’t in the picture at all.
All of the things I heard a father should be and what he should do I wondered why mine could never partake in things with me such as teaching me how to ride a bike, or making sure the boys at school wouldn’t steal my crayons when I was a child. He just wasn’t there and I blamed myself for it, until I got older and realized I wasn’t the problem he was. At the age of twelve my father was somewhat present in my life, although he didn’t know me as he should considering I was his daughter things were settling in.
The very next month things turned for the worse. I got into an altercation with my father because I expressed to him that I was unhappy with him being absent in my early childhood and he went on a rampage. He started yelling at me, calling me out of my name, saying things that are unforgivable, and threatening me. I didn’t understand how someone who was my own flesh and blood would disrespect me I mean how could he after all I was his daughter.
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise meaning when he talked and yelled I was quiet and when he finished he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. It wasn’t like I had done anything wrong but in his eyes I did. I questioned his actions and why he was that person in general then I learned that was his usual behavior. After my father and I weren’t on good terms me and my sisters relationship started to shift. She was always closer with my dad than I was. For a long time she was his favorite and he actually told me that one day.
The words came out of his own mouth and a part of me didn’t even get offended because he was right I mean I wasn’t exactly his number one fan. She is way more forgiving than I am, so when he would get out of control she would rationalize with him about the situation, but I always thought it to be impossible considering my father is a man who makes irrational decisions. My dad got out of control one day and started threatening me and the situation had escalated so quickly things became dangerous.
Both me and my sister had to be removed from the school and my mother had to come get us because he was once again making irrational, immature, and disheartening decisions. This was the last straw for my sister and this particular situation she was not able to forgive. We didn’t see my father for a whole year after that. A restraining order was made and for the first time as unfortunate as this may sound I felt at ease as in safe and less stressed. I used to wonder why God gave me the parents that I have.
My mother, one great successful woman who has inspired me so much to be ambitious, grateful, knowledgeable, honest, full of joy, and my disappointment of a father who cared more about his self and his feelings more than he did his own children, I learned after truly thinking about it that these were my parents because God saw fit for me to be put in this specific family and for me to experience different things and be exposed to different environments.
It didn’t matter the difficulty level of the things I encountered or faced it was just meant to happen and I had to learn that for myself. With the help of my counselor that I was seeing to help me understand my relationship with my father I was able to understand not just his actions but my own. How I didn’t feel comfortable to even call him my father, for him to give me a hug, for him to walk me down the aisle when I get married or have any contact him at all and she let me know that it was perfectly okay for me to feel like that.
During these long eighteen years of my life I have learned a lot, but through that experience I learned that I don’t long to have a relationship with my father, I learned my tolerance for how people treat me and most of all how I react to certain things that happen to me. Not everything in life needs a reaction, but as long as I am learning to be a better person for myself and the people around me I am okay with that.
