Meeting my father
When i was 2 years old, my father decided to abandon me and my mother. So i grew up having no idea who my father was.
One year later my mother got married with a man that i never liked. So i lived for 16 years with my granma and aunts. It was the biggest gift of my life because my mother's husband was aggressive and violent, i saw many times my mom with different bruises being unhappy for the whole life.
I never asked about my father, who never came to see me and never paid for my expenses. My aunts, sometimes, told me some things about him but one of them told me that he was dead ( because it was easier to explain to a child why her father wasn't with her ) while the other always told me that he had his own family and lived 500 meters from my house.
I still don't know if i missed a father in my life, but i never had any choice. I know that he has a daughter of my age and he loves her a lot but i never felt jealous. And so years passed and when i was a teenager all i thought about was: why i don't have a normal family like everybody else?! I felt a big shame on me, i felt shy for a long time and nobody, i mean there was no friend of mine that knew about my situation at home. I just didn't want to speak about that with anyone.
I hated boys who knew only how to hurt and had no understanding, i didn't want to go to school because for me it was just a manner to be in competition with the others. I never felt interest in boys and thought that would be impossible for me to fall in love.
But when i reached 18 years old i changed a lot. I felt more mature and knew that my life was still worth to live. A few years later i fell in love so deeply that my fears and problems disappeared for a while.
I was really happy but sometimes i still thought about my father and the kids that i wanted to have, what if they ask me about granpa?
I wouldn't know what to say, i never knew him. So, when i was 25 years old i went to meet him, i travelled 1000km to see him and talk to him, i did what he never was able to do for me. Now i know that he is a smart man, has many things to teach but not to me.
You can't be a daughter after 25 years of absence but i felt good, i felt brave, and now i feel in peace with myself. There are people that simply can't be good parents but we, one day, kids with no fathers, can be what they couldn't be. Life has plenty of beauty anyway...
Photo: Mitya Ku. Creative Commons.