So this blog is basically a place for me to vent and ponder, if you all haven’t noticed. The thing that is on my mind today is abandonment. This a serious post and I promise I’ll get back to the funny pictures and random comments soon but for now, I need to talk about this.
As I have referenced in my previous post, I am not close with one of my biological cocreators and it’s not my brilliant, lovely, amazing mother. It’s the sperm donor.
He left my mother and I in the lurch when I was four years old. He left her with a new house, two dogs, two cats, and a four year old. She was a stay at home mom. They had moved here from hundreds of miles away when I still in utero and she had no real family or true friends here. She could have gone back home. She could’ve done so many things. But because she herself grew up without a father, although hers was lost to death, not because he wanted to leave. She was strong. I am so very, very proud to come from a long line of tough women who when faced with adversity, they pull themselves up by their bootstraps and carried on. We do what has to be done. We keep on.
When he left, he broke her heart, but not her spirit. She kept on. She needed to for me. She could’ve gone home. Some days, I wish she had. I would have grown up tan and of official beach-babe status. I could’ve met some rich kid and gone off into the sunset and taken all the money in our divorce and lived happily ever after as the rich ex-wife. I could’ve grown up with all my normal family there, loving me and me growing up close to them. On the other hand, I could’ve gotten seriously messed up.
I always tried to never ask for anything I didn’t absolutely need. I’m still in the habit. I turn down things I would love and try to minimalize what I wanted. I didn’t want to be a burden. More than I already felt I was. My mother was living with a rampant undiagosed disease and had a lot going on. Money has always been tight. I never wanted to ask for anything, stemming out of guilt and independence.
My daddy is amazing. By my daddy, I don’t mean the man who sired me, I mean the man who stepped up to be there for me. He taught me to ride a bike, dried my tears, taught me how to change the oil in my car, met the boys I dated, was at every game and meet he could be at, knew what I liked and what I hated, knew my thoughts on my teachers and heard my off-the-cuff witticisms, and has always, always been there for me, even when I didn’t want him there. He doesn’t sleep well until I come home at night if I stay out late. This man is my daddy. This is the man I want to walk me down the aisle if that ever happens. This is the man I want involved in my future kid’s lives. This is the man that I think of when I say my daddy or dad or even father.
My cocreator can only name the last boy I dated because we were together for almost two years. He doesn’t know what classes I’m taking this term or how scared I am for nursing school next term. He doesn’t know my favorite color is yellow and he doesn’t know where I live or who I live with. He doesn’t even really care. Whenever I tried to to connect with him, he ignored me or threw money or things at me. He did this to assuage his conscience. If he has one. After analyzing all his behaviors, he could be categorized as a Malignant Narcissist according to the Brits, or as we Americans call it, a sociopath. He seems normal, but he can’t tell truth from fiction. When I was seven years old, I geared up the courage to ask him my he left my mother and I. He denied it flat out and said he didn’t leave, that my mother left him and I. This was a blatant lie. I knew it was untrue for several reasons: one, I remembered. Two, if I hadn’t, then the fact that I lived with my mom would’ve been different. Three, if she had left, she wouldn’t have kept the house. When I built up the courage to the confront him about this nearly two years later, he flat out denied he ever said that.
I am so, so tired of the lies. I am tired of not being wanted. I am an amazing person. My mother’s friends always told her how jealous they were that I never misbehaved and was a reasonable kid who listened and the biggest “disobeying” I ever did was over a can of soup (I asked Mom, she said I didn’t have time. I was starving and asked my dad who said yes. They thought it was hysterical and I fessed up. Mom was right though, I didn’t and was two minutes late. But seriously, it was worth it). I was involved with everything in high school and still in college. I am a hard worker, clever, smart, pretty, and most of all, I have spirit and courage. I am a wonderful person and he should have been fucking proud to be my cocreator. He should have been fucking involved. Because the consequence of his self-centeredness is he has no clue how fucking amazing I am. And I am. I am so wonderfully treasured and brilliant and shiny. My friends are glad to have me. My mother loves me deeply and so do my daddy and my siblings. Even his second-ex wife (still my stepmom, don’t care how many times he gets married) is still active in my life because she wants to know me and she wants my young half brothers to know me. This bastard is missing out. And even though I know I’m not missing anything, I am angry at him for missing this opportunity. He will never known me as a child. He never knew my as a teen. And now, as I am a young adult, no matter how many times I try to reach out to him, he still won’t know me. I am merely there when convient to him. He is not my father. He is not my dad. He is merely my cocreator, a genetic coincidence.
And now, after two decades of ignoring me and verbally assaulting me by trying to tear my self esteem down with either words to that exact fact, the lies, or the deafening silence that told me how unwanted I was, this bastard is moving a block and a half away from me. Now I get to be ignored in a more convenient location. Hoo-fucking-ray. This was after I confronted him this summer and told him he didn’t know who I was. He said he wanted to change that. Did I mention he stood me up on Sunday when I was supposed to hang out with him? He is on leave currently until this weekend and has he made any effort to see me? The child he claims to want to know and be a dad to?
Of course you know the answer. It was no. He rescheduled me to tomorrow after my little brother’s birthday celebration at my former stepmom’s house. Five bucks says it falls through too. I have no faith, no trust, and no respect for this man. But I love my daddy to death. And some part of me wants to love this cocreator too. And that’s okay. I can love him and try to respect him. But this really isn’t about the quality of who I am and it never has been. This is all his own issues. Someday, he’s going to sit down and say “Holy Shit, I missed out on my child. Who is she??” And he’ll regret it. Or maybe he never will. And that’s okay. Because I have people who love me. And most importantly? I love myself. I know my shortcomings, but I still love myself. I don’t every day and there are moments I’m not proud of. But if I don’t love me, then no one else really counts. So if you are someone who reads this and says “I have someone absent in my life”, maybe the absent person really is you. Do you love yourself? Really. Not “of course I do”, do you value yourself? Do you know that you deserve better than what you have? Whether it be in a relationship, small or large scale, or work, or anything, would you want what you have for a friend? If not, why would you tolerate it for yourself?
YOU DESERVE BETTER. And in scenarios like mine, you may not always be able to change that person’s actions. What you can do is change your expectations and know that it really and truly, no matter what they say or think or believe, has nothing to do with you. It’s their issues. Now, go forth and love yourselves. Do one thing that you want this week that you would normally call an overindulgence. It can be small or big, up to you. Me? I’m going to break out sketchbooks and spend my time at my brother’s party sketching his happiness. Maybe I’ll take a bubble bath. Or make myself a hot chocolate in the morning. The thing that kills me is that my brothers are going to realize the truth about our genetic father soon enough. The older probably has. But they’ll have something I didn’t: someone who knows exactly what they’re going through, same person and everything. Maybe I’ll even break this out and show them.
Until a more funny note comes to mind, I hope you all learn to love yourselves. Keep me updated on your ideas,
Aurora
Eccentric Elephants 