Many of you tell me how much you love my positive posts and how inspirational they are. This one may not be so much like that but please hear me out and consider.
For me these are the hardest two months of the year. These months where we celebrate Mother's Day and Fathers Day. They are hard for me because one was never there - even when I reached out to him and begged him to be there. The other one was there but in plain truth was alcoholic and abusive towards me physically, mentally and emotionally - mostly because she saw in me the reason my dad was not with her and thereby caused her to be a single mother. I was punished for what she saw as his choice not to be with her.
As an adult I learned far more to the story than I ever wanted to know. From the letters written to my dad and his responses to me. From family and from people who personally knew my dad and his side of the story. From trying to reach out to siblings on his side as an adult only to have that door slammed in my face, as if I don't exist. I learned more about the reasons why he did not stay from his side. I learned more about the dynamics that were in play at that time. I also learned that even though I had been told she wanted me that she actually had tried to give me away to my babysitter, not coming to see me for days and weeks till my babysitter brought me back to her home (in a different city) and told her she had to raise me. Imagine that news being dropped on you, as an adult. That the one anchor you clung to as the reason you had been in that situation really didn't exist at all.
The warm fuzzies of mom always being there was not my lot in life. I can not remember one game of mine she ever attended. Growing up I played football, baseball, soccer, wrestled, gymnastics. track and field.. Except for signing permission slips and paying moderate fees as I worked off the books since 12 somewhere and made my own money, that was where that support ended. The only extra curricular activity she ever supported was Boy Scouts because in her words she didn't "want me to be like the other n******"
I was not a perfect child, which constantly aggravated her. Never, ever would I claim this. This only aggravated me that I was not accepted at home. This began a vicious cycle of not meeting expectations and requite punishments or disaffection. Which only magnified the negativity of the situation more on both sides. My eventual diagnosis of ASD (Aspergers Syndrome) only clarified how hard it must of been for her wanting a perfect child to prove she had not made a mistake, having to deal with me and my issues.
My dad was just a voice on a telephone. A hero in absentia. My mother never once disparaged him in my presence. It was only as an adult I realized that it was because she still loved him and wished that somehow he would return. She passed more of a broken heart than from the cancer that ravaged her body. To me he was only a number I had memorized in a different city that I was only to call in case of emergency. There were no games of catch. No fishing. No correction or instruction.No how to be man or how to treat women or how to be a husband, provider, protector or priest. He could not even call me son or my boy when we did talk - referring to me as "buddy." After my mothers death I reached out to him a few times, confronted him and even openly invited him to play a part in his grandchildren's lives. Yet he chose the comfort of the alternate reality he had been living for years than to connect with what he deemed a mistake of divine origins
My life was spent running from my reality. I wished to have what I saw my classmates had. Parents that cared about them. Instead i had a father who didn't want me and a mother who abused me. I could never reconcile that, especially in light of the Christian teachings I had learned. It made me a confused, angry child. Begging for attention, desperately seeking friends and approval because I did not have it at home. I was forced to live lies in a community that knew the truth, which made me look like a liar. I never wanted to be a father not for being selfish but I never had one so I did not know how to be one. If it was not for the safety of my cousins that hung with me, kept me company and honestly (in hind sight) tolerated me being around them, I never would of made it thru childhood and the teen age years alive.
As an adult, I became able by God's grace to forgive. To find relief for the pain thru prayer and thru writing. To understand that my beginning did not have to be my end. To deal with the brokenness as a christian and as a man and eventually as a father. To understand that even my negatives as great as they were had some positives that could propel me forward to a positive place spiritually, emotionally, mentally. And while there are many that may wish I never speak of my past only because it forces them to deal with their actions or reactions to keep the past dead and buried, know that I am at peace. I speak to free others, not myself. I am free. I am stronger today because I can share it.
I write this to say to all of you, please continue to share the wonderful stories of your mother and father. Please let the world know how much they inspired you, motivated you, cared for you, encouraged you. For those of us that endured situations like mine, although we may be pained for what we did not have growing up, we are happy that others got to experience the true joys of being a part of a connected caring family. Much love to you and yours this Mother's Day.
