I know I may receive hateful comments for this post, but this needs to be said. Not everyone is happy it’s Father’s Day.
Today I see so many posts on social media from people celebrating their dads and being so thankful for their relationships with their dad, and it gives me mixed emotions. I am happy for them, but sad for me. Maybe even jealous. I think I actually hate Father’s Day more than Mother’s Day. I am a fatherless daughter, and it was HIS choice to make me that. I did happen to have a very special man in my life who helped me, but not everyone is so lucky.
My parents (which I hate calling him my parent, or my father) divorced when I was 13, so I have been fatherless for most of my life. He would pick me up every Tuesday night and we would go for ice cream and it was the most awkward 45 minutes of my life. It must have been for him too because he never offered to do something else or stay longer to talk.
Then one day as I was getting out of the car he said, “Kathleen, I was never a teenage girl, so I don’t know how to relate to you. I won’t be taking you for ice cream or anything else anymore.”
Tears streamed down my face as he drove off, and that was the last time he spoke to me. I didn’t understand what he meant. I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. I didn’t understand why he didn’t love me.
And just like that, he changed everything. I found an article that talks about how being fatherless affects women, and almost ALL of it applies to me, and linked it here. I struggle with trusting people and fear they will eventually leave me and in turn that makes relationships very hard. I have self esteem issues. I guard my heart almost obsessively.
My mom wanted me to go to court and help her request child support and I couldn’t. I was afraid of what he would say or do. Maybe I was protecting him. I feel bad for worrying about his feelings now.
I tried throughout my life to reach out to him and have him in my life. I invited him to my high school graduation. My college graduation. I told him when I was getting married the first time. He never responded. It hurt so much to keep trying without any response, but I felt I had to. Why did I care? I don’t know, even now.
Then my grandmother, (his mother) died. The obituary said she was survived by one granddaughter. I was the oldest of two. My brain said Fuck him while my heart asked what is wrong with me? Why don’t I exist to him?
Then my mom passed away. He did nothing. NOTHING!!!! I don’t think I expected him to come to the viewing. I couldn’t have handled that then. But I needed him to send a card, or flowers, or something. It was if neither of us had ever existed in his life, that he had never loved us or wanted us at all. How could that be true?
That day I began calling myself an orphan of both circumstance (mom) and choice (him.) I told my heart he was now dead too. It was far less painful to think he was dead too than to keep hoping he would respond to me.
Then I got divorced, and remarried, and had two beautiful children, his only grandchildren that would be biological since I am an only child, but I did not reach out to him. “Funny” thing was I saw him out and about, but he never acted like he knew me. I look just like him so….
I so wanted to go up to him and say, “hey, these are your grandchildren, and they are amazing, but unfortunately for you, you won’t have the chance to know them.” But I couldn’t bear the thought of him saying he didn’t know me, or didn’t have any children, and abandoning me, and them. I couldn’t bear that pain for them.
I still think of him every Father’s Day, and wonder if he thinks of me too, and hate that I have to be reminded that he chose to walk away and chose to stop loving me.
For all the fathers that choose to leave, try to be careful what you say because your words will last and hurt forever. If you don’t care, I feel sorry for you that your heart is so cold.
And for all the other fatherless daughters by choice or circumstance out there, you aren’t alone. You are strong. You are loved. You do matter.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57bad520e4b07d22cc38fc08?guccounter=1
sapphicorstraight 