There are a lot of things that I thought I had gotten over; that I thought I had forgiven. Yesterday, I was pretty surprised to learn that isn’t the case. My life was hard, largely due to the fact that my father was never there. When I was little, I never understood why I would call and call and call and he would never call me back. I never understood why every greeting card was signed by his wife, and only occasionally by him. I never understood why he wasn’t there for me. I’ve seen him I think maybe 3 times in my whole life; the last time was actually the beginning of 2006. One thing I can say about my dad is that anytime I ever needed money, he would send it. I always wait until I have no one else to turn to; no one else to ask; until he is my last resort, just because of how I feel about asking him, but he’s never said no… he always helps me in that area. That being said, collectively there have not been many times that I actually asked him…
Anyway, to try to get to the point, I truly thought I had forgiven him for not being the kind of father that I deserved to have; for not being the father to me that he was to the children he had after he left me and my sister, Kelly, behind… Erika and Chris. I don’t know them all that well… definitely not as well as I would like to. I do talk to them, mainly through MySpace *haha* and we plan to eventually try to get together, but they live in Colorado and we live in Louisiana. Erika just got married and she sent her photo link to me the other day… I didn’t have time to look at the until yesterday and as I started going through them, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. She was the most gorgeous bride I have ever seen… she had a beautiful wedding. All her family was there; all her friends… her mother and her father, her brother…
Let me go back a little. When I was coming up, I had barely any friends. We were pretty much poor… we didn’t have the new clothes and all the things everone else seemed to have. I got picked on at times because I wore the same things alot, or I wore things my grandmother made for me. There were spurts throughout my life where we had a little extra here and there when momma was working different places, but it was tough. My mother never got to live out her dreams because she sacrificed everything for us. My first thought while looking through the over 700 professional photos that each looked like they were cut from the best Bridal magazine was, “She is living my life… the life I never was able to have.” I didn’t ever have many friends. I’ve actually had ONE friend that has truly been a consistent part of my life and I love her dearly; she is the sister that destiny forgot to give me! My family was never close… for a while, I found it hard to be close to anybody because of all the issues that I had. To put it bluntly, I was just having a bad life.
I’m probably rambling, but it’s hard to get all the details in… I remember a time where we had to walk to the grocery store and literally lived off of pancakes and ramen noodles… I remember my mom being so stressed trying to make it; trying to figure out how she was going to pay this or that; how she was going to take care of this returned check and that one. When I had my bone tumor removed in my leg, I don’t remember ever hearing from my dad. I don’t know that he even knew. My grandfather was my dad; when he died, I was empty. My first two teen years were spent in a destructive whirlwind. I cared about nothing and every time I talked to my dad, the only thing I remember is him talking about himself, singing one of his songs, or telling me how happy he was that I didn’t turn out fat like my Aunt Sandra like he thought I would. What kind of thing is that to say to a child that was on drugs and had tried to commit suicide because of YOU!?
So, anyway, as I look through the photos, I see how Erika looks at him… with admiration… like “This is my daddy”… wow. I just started crying so hard; I just started thinking, “THAT IS MY DADDY TOO… and I don’t even know him.” So many feelings overwhelmed me… the spirit of anger and jealousy and hatred just surrounded me. I realized I hadn’t forgiven him. I had ignored and not dealt with my feelings; I had tried to forget about how I felt about things… but just because you don’t think about it doesn’t mean you have forgiven. Forgiveness is a process… one that I never went through. I have to face those feelings. I have to be able to be honest with myself and honest with God in prayer about the feelings I have toward my father. I just kept thinking, “What was so bad about me that he takes so much better care of them??”
I never had a wedding. I never had health insurance that I remember…Â I never got braces. I never had any type of security. I never had him.
My mom sacrificed her whole life for us… every dream she ever had, every dollar she ever made. He sacrificed nothing for us, and did everything for them. The only time I ever remember him actually calling me out of the blue without me calling him a million times first was New Years Day of this year (2007)… he called and told me he loved me and was proud of me. I still don’t even know how to feel about that. How can you be proud of me? How can you love me? You don’t even know me. You have no idea who I am. And what was worse was that he didn’t seem to even know that my birthday was the very next day… he never mentioned it. That went along with years of him forgetting pretty much everything. It hurts so bad. I feel so silly here at 24 years old, happily married with everything I ever hoped to have… and feeling like I’m missing everything I never even knew. I will never question God; I know that He has blessed me through my trials and my circumstances… but my father has free will like the rest of us. He had a choice to make when he walked away and never looked back; and he made it. And my sister and I suffered for it for years, and still are. I am still so angry at him. I remember all the tears I shed that he will never know about. I remember all the calls I made that were never returned. One of the things that always stuck out to me was when I called him back in 03 to ask him to send me money for the rest of my tuition or book money or something… he never even asked me what I was majoring in. That stung me. Not only did he not know me, but he didn’t seem to care to either.
I guess all of this is to say several things. I am still so hurt by the fact that he left his two daughters to go have two children with someone else and then give them a life that we only dreamed of having. Kelly and I both always had to fight for everything we had… we failed miserably many many times. Now, she and I have drifted apart because of my own mistakes so I don’t know how she is doing because we don’t talk and she hasn’t forgiven me. But I know that I still have that child screaming on the inside, begging for the love that no one else can give me. The love of my father. My Heavenly Father is revealing a lot of things to me; and I am starting to learn a whole new perpective. I am not yet able to “use” that perspective because my emotions block it out most of the time; but I am “learning” it.
Forgiveness is a process that you have to go through. Ignoring it doesn’t make your pain go away; it just hardens it so that it hurts that much more when it actually hits you. I have so much animosity toward my dad that I didn’t know I still had. I resent him a great deal. There are things that he missed that are essential to knowing who I am. There are places in my life that he should have been included. The whole time I flipped through the fabulous wedding photography, I just kept reminding myself how happy I was for Erika… while that little voice within me was shouting, “I don’t even have a father to give me away… I don’t even belong to him like that… like she does.”
All that being said, I was better off with him not being in my life because 90% of the negative things I went through in my life were because of the hole he left and the hurt he caused. There are years I can never get back… and while we may eventually have a relationship, it will never quite be that father-daughter relationship because of the great divide that has been fortified. But all of my experiences taught me what I know and gave me the testimony that I have, so I am thankful to God for allowing me to become who I am because I am a good woman with a powerful message and a wonderful heart and a lot to give… but I’m realizing that being thankful apparently doesn’t make it hurt any less. And while I will never question God because God made all of my “bad” work out for my “good” because I am called according to His purpose, what hurts so much is that I don’t understand my dad; and like so many children in my position, I have that burning question, “Why didn’t you love me?”
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