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The girl that wanted to meet her father |
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Around twelve years ago I decided I wanted to talk to my biological father. No biggie right? Wrong. I met him some time during the late summer. I remember the first phone call like it happened yesterday. The conversation has been forgotten, but the feelings of nervousness haven’t. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the couch, my mom sitting in it with a phonebook on her lap, my baby brother sitting next to her chewing on one of his toys. I remember looking at my father’s name in the phonebook while she asked me if I really wanted to talk to him or not. I said I did. Mom had no problem calling him for me, but she did make sure to tell me one thing.
“If you and him get along, that’s great. But don’t expect me to ever like him, think he’s a super-dad, or what ever may happen. I have my reasons for not liking him, but if he’s good to you that’s all that matters.”
Great, I thought. Maybe me and my dad will strike up a relationship and he’ll finally be around, ya know? WRONG again. I talked to him on the phone, I was so scared I had a hard time finding my voice, but after awhile we decided to meet that weekend. Yay, right? Well at the time it was a yay. I spent the whole week thinking about it, you could honestly say I was excited to finally meet him, even after all the trouble he’d caused when I was younger. Claiming I wasn’t his child so on and so forth.
The day we met we were at Lakewood park. I look at the picnic area we met and to this day I remember everything that happened, and now I want to burn that ******** to the ground.
I met my father, he was tall, bald and fat, and I couldn’t believe how much I looked like him, and he couldn’t believe how much I looked like his mother. We visited, I learned about my two siblings, Corey and Hannah, if I remember their names correctly. They were around the same age as my brother, Nathan. I thought great, I’ve got a little sister. Oh how I wish I could smack the girl that wanted to meet her father.
I spent a few hours talking to him, and learning about my uncles, aunts and my other grandparents. We met around 6 or so and we stayed at the park talking until probably nine. I remember mom asking if he knew what time it was and him looking up at the moon and telling her what time it was, then her checking and yes it was really close to that exact time. He was only a few minutes off. This impressed the hell out of me, to be ten years old and having a father that could tell time just by the area the moon was located? Who wouldn’t be impressed! Mom said it was time for us to go, I was okay with it. The next week or so I talked to my dad on the phone a few times, and met him once more.
The second time I met him he brought his other children with him. I met them, they were just like Nathan, young, full of energy and slightly annoying. While I was hanging out with my dad at the mall I was being filled with empty promises. Like meeting the rest of his family, my cousins, my other grandparents and such. I was even told he’d get me in on their YMCA group cause they were members and blah blah.
I talked to him for another few hours learning more about his family and then the mall was closing, so it was time to leave. I left before he did. My mom, brother, myself and my mom’s then boyfriend (now ex-husband) all went home.
Little did I know at the time it would have been the last time I were to see him in person. The next day after I had gotten home from school, which had started while I had been talking to my father I called him. His wife, or my step-mother was very nice and talked to me for a few minutes until my father came home then she gave the phone to him. I talked to him for a few minutes then he said he was tired, he’d just gotten home from work and that he would call me back the next afternoon when I got out of school. I didn’t think anything of it at the time and said goodbye, that I’d talk to him tomorrow.
The next day came and went with no phone call. I asked my mom if I should call him and see if something had happened because he hadn’t called. She told me to wait, so I did. One week later I still hadn’t gotten a phone call. I decided that if he wasn’t going to call me I should probably call him and see if everything was okay. Well, I got the phonebook out, and stood at the phone thinking. Then I decided that I should just wait for him to call me. For some strange reason I had a gut-wrenching feeling that I was being ditched on. I hated how my gut told me things and then they usually came out that way. I tried to ignore the feeling for another week, giving it a total of two weeks from the last phone call I had gotten from him.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and months turned into a year. A year turned into two, then three, then five, then ten and now twelve. I know he’s never going to call me, I don’t know why I secretly hope he’s going to. It’s stupid really. I went from being a hopefully ten year old to a hopeless almost twenty three year old. I know he had no intentions on ever being in my life, and I have no intentions on him ever being a part of it now. I would however be apart of his, or my siblings lives if they wanted to get a hold of me. I hold no ill-will against them, they were only children and did nothing against me. I sit here sometimes and I watch these stupid movies of the estranged father that comes back around and wants to be apart of the kid’s life and I think “Fictional movies make life look so wonderful. When in all reality, the father’s hardly ever come back. And if they do, it‘s just to use the kid, then lose them again.”
Well, what I haven’t told you is something I learned later in life about my father. He had told his mother that he had been talking to me, and that one day my mother decided she didn’t want me having any contact with him. Which isn’t true at all. Well his mother was talking to my aunt one day, who had a different last name than me or my mom and she was talking about her son, and the daughter he wasn’t allowed to see. Well, my father’s mother started to bash my mother, and my aunt set her straight. Letting her know that is was him that didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and so on.
Well, I don’t really want to call her my grandmother, because I feel she has not earned that title, but his mother asked him about what my aunt had said. He finally admitted that he was the one that cut off contact. His reason? He didn’t want to be a father. This really blew my mind, he had three other kids, yes I know I stated two earlier, but he’d had another one after he and I stopped talking. He didn’t want to be a father and had three other kids? Yeah, it kind of blew my mind as well. It doesn’t make any sense at all other than it’s a bullshit reason to not talk to me.
I have seen him a few times, but they weren’t intended. I seen him at Wal-mart with five kids running around and one in a car-seat. Yes, he’s got six children other than me. A man that didn’t want to be a father has six kids. You’d think if he didn’t want to be a father he would have either gotten snipped or used protection. But he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.
So, after I’ve spilled this, my past with my father. I know if he would have stayed in my life I would not be the person I am today. But after sitting back and looking, I’m glad he decided to stay away. But there’s always that small piece of me that wants to call him up and let him know when something dramatic happens in my life. I know when I was younger and on my death bed my mother wanted to call him and tell him. I’m not sure if it was me that told her not to or maybe she didn’t want to deal with him. Either way I’m glad she never did.
But like I’m stated before, if he came around and decided to be apart of my life, I would tell him “I just don’t feel like being a daughter“. Or maybe I’d tell him “I’ll call you back tomorrow. I’m kinda tired.” Then never call him back. I know in order to be better than those that have wronged you, you shouldn’t act like them, but in all god’s honesty it would cross my mind. The thoughts of treating him like he treated me. But I’m better than that, so I would never do it. I’d probably politely tell him I don’t want a damn thing to do with him, he’s got other kids. But in the back of my mind I’d be beating myself up because my father wanted to be in my life and I rejected him.
But ya know, for years I thought I had been rejected by my father. For years I let it eat me inside, the thought that my father didn’t want anything to do with me because I wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t what he expected and so on. The reasons I had were a mile long and completely not true. It took me several years after I heard he didn’t want to be a father that it was him that wasn’t good enough for me. He wasn’t what I had expected, which was true in many ways.
But to this day the memories of all the unneeded pain he caused me still surfaces every once in awhile. I’ve tried to hide it and I think I’ve done a pretty good job at it, but there’s sometimes when people are talking about their fathers that have stuck around and were good fathers that I feel jealous of them and its then I start thinking about how I wish things would have been different with my father and I. But really, if things would have been different chances are my life would have ended up the same way it is now. Only one thing would be different, it’d be one hundred times more ******** up.
It would, if I think I’ve got problems now, I’d have more than my fair share if he were here. Who would want a father around that lies, and uses his family like they’re disposable? Family is really all a person has, and the family that you do have, and the ones who are involved in your life you shouldn’t mistreat. But not everyone sees things the way I finally see them, and it took me twelve years to finally realize it was my father that wasn’t good enough for me. I know I’ve told people many years ago the things I have said here, but what got me thinking is I was listening to a song. Which I suggest if you know the lyrics will make you sad do not listen to it.
But it was song called “The saddest song” by The Ataris. It’s all about a father wishing he would have been his child’s life, and at the same time it’s about a child whose father isn’t around. Well what got me to writing this is because the lyrics go “I remember waiting for you to come, I remember waiting for you to call. I remember waiting there to find nothing at all.”
And it got me thinking about how things went down with my father and I. Who I’ve dubbed “the donor” because I personally believe he doesn’t deserve the title “father”. A man that would do anything to get out of paying child support, a man that flat out ditched his ten year old daughter that wanted to be in his life? Why should he be titled father? He hasn’t been one, there for he isn’t one. Not mine at least. I’m his daughter by DNA, and he’s my father by it, but that’s as close as we are. If I could, I’d remove his DNA from my body, but I can’t do that if I want to survive.
What really sucks about knowing he’s apart of me is if I ever have children, he’ll be apart of them too. And his blood will be carried on through me and through them as well. They shouldn’t have to carry the burden of his DNA, I don’t want to pass that down to them. I’d feel like I was cursing them. But I guess if they never knew about him then they’d never know, right?
Besides, Nathan’s father - Thomas, he has been more of a dad to me than he really should have been. He’s my brother’s father, not mine, but he feels like my father. I consider him my father, I remember shortly after my real father ditched me sitting in my room crying over it and Thomas coming in and telling me that I should have been his child, not Jeff’s. I couldn’t agree more. I love Thomas like a father, and I would do anything for him. He’s got kidney disease and I’m terrified of him dying and leaving us. He’s always been there, well ever since I was four years old, so pretty much for as long as I can remember he’s been there and he’s always been nice to me. Sure him and my mom had some really rocky times, okay, down right shitty times but he was always good to me. Always.
Unlike the b*****d my mom ended up marrying. He was only nice to me to trick my mom. As soon as they were married it was hell. He went from being Mr. Wonderful to Mr. a*****e in less than two weeks after their wedding. Thomas has never been that way, ever. Sometimes I wish Thomas would actually fill out papers to adopt me, and then I’d be his kid legally not just because I love him like a dad, it’d be on paper, not just in the heart. Maybe I should talk to him about that someday. Well, this is the ending to the girl that wanted to meet her father. She’s grown into a young woman and has moved on, and someone filled the shoes her biological father decided not to fill.
 WatchTheSunDie · Tue Nov 18, 2008 @ 08:19am · 0 Comments |
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