daddy dearest

Tonight I watched True Life: I'm Looking for My Father and it brought to the forefront what I've been trying so hard to keep in the way back of mind. Let me explain...

Let me put it this way. I'm halfway through my 22nd year--though I certainly don't feel it--and everyone reading this blog knows as much about my father as I do. I know nothing... Don't feel bad for me, though. This has never been a sore subject for me. You know, everytime a "fathers" convo starts up, there's the inevitable question about mine. I hate telling people that I don't know my father, not because it hurts me to share that information, but because I know I'm going to spend the next 5 minutes assuring them that my feelings are in no way hurt and I'm not the slightest bit upset by the topic of conversation. I cannot stress enough that the fact that my father has been absent from my life does not upset me to discuss.

Of course, I'm not saying it's always easy. Up until I was 4, I never gave it much thought. The other kids had daddies and I didn't, and this didn't strike me as wrong. But somewhere around the age of 4, my best friend Skye and I were looking through an old photo album, and in it was a picture of a man I had never seen before. Skye mentioned, hey maybe that's him? Being 4 years old, I had no problem walking right up to my mom and saying "hey Skye and I were wondering if that's my dad..." Now, although my earliest experiences have all but completely faded from my memory, what my mom said next has never left me.

She said, that's none of your business, we don't talk about that.

Doesn't that sound horrible? Yes, it does. But let me say for the record that my mom is incredible and I love her unconditionally; she is not nearly as awful as that statement. But my mom and I have also come a long way in the past 20 years. I think now that she respects me as an adult, that is not something she would dare say to me again.

Which brings me to the present. Ever since that tender age of 4, I have dreamt of the day that I would ask about my father. To my surprise, there has never been a situation in which the topic came up naturally. In high school, I promised myself that I would ask her after graduating. As I noted in my previous post, that was 4 years ago, and here I sit, no wiser than when I was 4.

Though my mom has spent my entire lifetime proving to me that she loves me unconditionally, too, I'm scared shitless of having this conversation with her. I'm afraid she'll be angry, I'm afraid it will hurt her, and I'm terrified that she won't want to tell me the truth. I will have to make sure she knows that the only way she could hurt me is by not telling me the honest-to-God, naked truth. I don't care what the truth is, as long as I get the truth. I have to be prepared for whatever her response will be. Another thing that scares me so: if she would refuse to give me the answers I need, my relationship with her would be forever changed.

After watching True Life tonight, I found myself crying into a pillow as the realization set in that now is the time I have to do what I've spent the last 18 years preparing myself for. I have to ask her. I have to know. No one deserves to know about him more than I do. And for the record, I do not feel the need to meet him, nor do I want to. Save a few exceptions, I think I'm pretty well-adjusted and I've done the best I could at growing up with no male influence. I feel no desire to bring him in now. I just need to KNOW. I need to know his name, what he looks like, why I don't know him, and most importantly, does he know I exist?

My entire life, this has been something that comes and goes as a passing thought. The thought never lingers for long, and quite some time usually passes before I think of it again. But as I get older, I find myself thinking about it more and more often, and as of late, it's come up a lot. It's time. In fact, I'm setting myself a deadline.

Sunday morning... If I can make it till then.