A Story of Abandonment: The Damage

*This is the first of a two part post by SimplyRik, who has rented my blog for the weekend.*

I have been a fan of Maria’s blog for a while now and was moved by a recent post from a guest that was extremely personal and more of an emotional release for a very personal life experience.  Now I enjoy completely the Immoral Matriarch’s ability to voice what she feels here in her space, which is the reason I keep coming back for more.  I decided that I to wanted to share my very personal experience with Maria to get her view on whether or not it was worthy of a guest appearance her on her blog.  I think this needs to be a two post story given to allow everyone to digest the emotions from a two sided story.  Anyhow, I sent both pieces of the story to Maria who read them and then offered me the opportunity to drop my writings here.  For that I am honored.  Thank you Maria.

In this world where there are so many men doing the wrong thing, I wanted to tell my story.  You see, I was a young man who, like many others who didn’t really understand the concept of “Cause and Effect.”  So much so, that I contributed to the view that “All men are fucking assholes.”  I always took offense to that, but in reality, I was one of them.  In my heart I knew I was a good man, at least I wanted to be, but my actions always seemed to get in the way.

In 1988 I had a daughter at 19 in wedlock.  The marriage fell apart and I was absent from her life for 17 years.  I was not however a “Dead-beat Dad.”  In 2005 I found her through the internet and after an intense internal struggle, decided to reach out to her and make contact.  What follows was her emotional response expressed in a paper she wrote for one of her courses in school.  She decided to share it with me to help me understand what she was feeling.  Needless to say, this was a writing that tore at my heart and soul in a way that forced me to face my own demons in my response to her which I will also share.   First, her paper…

A Long Awaited Conversation

Society’s view of a perfect family consists of a mother, father and children. Well, I did not have that type of family. My parents divorced when I was a year and a half. As a little girl, I always had this image in my head that he would be this tall handsome man with thick hair and showed a similar resemblance to myself. My mother raised me, and I would receive the occasional child support check, but that is about it. I never had a relationship with my father and, the fact that he was stationed in Japan by the Navy never made things easier either. He hardly ever kept in touch but, I am sure his intentions of starting a relationship with me were good. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months turned into years. I never spoke with him on the phone because I did not know him, and I was afraid that he would not like me. Over time his calls ceased and so did the gifts.

For almost ten years, my life was perfect. My mom was my best friend and I was content with what God had given me. It was just my mom and myself, and I never thought about meeting my father nor thought about what was going on in his life. I moved on with my life and so did my father. My mother remarried when I was eight, and I see my step-father as the only man in my life. It was not until May of 2006 that I finally heard from my father. After returning from a chorus concert, I logged onto my own web page, the usual blogging sight and saw that I had a new message. It was tagged “I am so proud.” Curious to the unknown, I opened the mysterious letter and saw that it was from my father.

I ran to my mom’s room and saw that she was asleep. I told her to wake up because a certain Richard Jones had sent me a note. She did not believe me at first, after reading the letter; she was surprised as well as shocked with this long awaited moment. He told me that he could not change his actions and he was sorry for never being there for me. He gave me a link to his blog so that I could have a better understanding as to what he had done with his life for the past sixteen years. At first, I did not really want to have anything to do with him. Why show interest in someone that never took the time to show interest in me? To be perfectly honest, I thought that he had forgotten me. Why now? Why after sixteen years did the man that gave me life, finally appear? What were his reasons? For a brief moment, I became clueless. A rush of anger spread like a disease. How could I forgive a person who I hardly knew, let alone had a tiny relationship with? I did not know what to do. My mother told me to give it a chance because he was at least trying to make an effort to pick up where he left off.

Later that night, I read his blog and found that he had been to many different places around the country. I also learned that he had a daughter who was a year and a half and a son that is expected to be born in October. How ironic! When my parents divorced, I was just a year and a half. For many years, I saw this man as a stranger. I grew up with the idea that I did not need him and I would be fine with the family I grew to know and love so dearly. It was apparent that he had move on with his life and I had already moved on with mine. When discussing my life with him, I had just as many question as he had for me. I was curious if his wife even knew anything about me and if so, what she had to say about him having a daughter who was about to graduate from high school. He told me that she was okay with the situation, but it was just hard to adjust. I felt a little better knowing that she would also accept me as her step daughter. As the days progressed, he sent email after email and I began to see that he was not such a bad guy after all. He would send me questionnaires just to get to know about the little things that had evolved throughout my life. I would sit at the computer and anxiously wait for a response from my father and see what other question he needed me to answer.

I still feel hurt by his apathetic nature but I learned that I have to be an adult and grow up. There were days where I would cry because I felt as though he did not love me. I felt like his new children were more important that me which he left behind sixteen years ago. This moment changed my life because I had to let down a wall of hate, aggravation, and frustration, which I had let slowly escalate into a skyscraper, crumble into a tiny ant hill. As time progressed, I accepted that fact that my father never took advantage of the possible time he could have spent with me. For him to appear out of the blue, it was not easy to change what I was already accustomed to. It is hard to change a lifestyle that had been encoded in my brain. I felt as though he did not care enough to do the little things like send a birthday or Christmas card. After the divorce, it was if I fell off the face of the Earth. He remarried and had another daughter. In a sense, I was jealous. When I looked at the pictures of her that he had posted on his website, she was so beautiful and I felt like the abandoned child. I knew that I would never get the attention and love that she had already received. As I sat and read through his web page, tears would roll down my face in utter disbelief that I had been set to the side for another life and family.  His new daughter would get everything I was never fortunate enough to receive. A father-daughter dance or to be daddy’s little girl. Just the things a daughter looks forward to do with their fathers. When this situation was put into my life, it was hard to put the grudge to the side and start over.

I am sill trying to forgive him for his cowardliness. I have learned that I must put my feelings of disdain to the side and try to form a relationship with a man who up until now has had no effect on my life what-so ever. I no longer receive email daily, but I do get an occasional hello or a simple just because email but, I guess that is better than nothing at all. Society’s views have not played a part on my beliefs of a perfect family. Although my father reappeared sixteen years later, I am still happy with my life and those that have a tremendous part in it. I would not change a thing in the world and I am happy that I was able to have my long awaited conversation with my father.

You can judge me now if you want to but know this, I am not a bad man.  I made mistakes, I am trying to make up for them with her.  The bitch about time is that you can never go back and undo what has been done.  Life is fucked up that way.  But I also know that events in life, although scarring, are sometimes the stepping stones in life that make us better individuals.

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