I grew up not having complete trust in men or males and it took many years of counseling to face the reasons why.
My mother became a single mom at the age of 22. I was not planned and according to her, during her drunken states, unwanted. It was harsh to grow up not feeling wanted, loved or protected by your own mother.
I never knew who my biological father was and as far I know he never knew about me. Many times I would ask but would never get a straight answer. It was always a mystery. The only information I have is that she had met him when she was attending a secretarial school while living in Dallas. He was friends with the group of people she ran around with during that time. She went home one summer and he apparently went looking for her. She had been in a car accident a few weeks prior to the day when he showed up to her house that summer. The rest is well history. He left and she never saw him again.
I only found out at the end of 2015 more information about my biological father because he had passed away. I would do these random online searches for his name and one day something popped up. I did a screenshot of his picture and confronted my mother. She confirmed it rather smugly “Yeah that’s him.” When she asked how I got his picture and told her I found his obituary she was so nonchalant about it. I had never felt so much hate for another person the way I felt in that moment.
I never got to meet him or know anything about him. The only information I have is from the obituary. He had been an architect, former Army veteran, married and had 3 children. I also found out that he had actually been married when he knew my mother by the wedding date posted along with the other information. My heart sank when I realized that. I felt like I truly had never been wanted by either one of them and that I was never meant to be here. It took a lot of talking with my therapist to get past that those thoughts and the hurt is still there but fading. I will never know what really happened between them and I have to accept that. This is the only picture I will ever have of him and now I know where some of my features and those of my oldest son comes from.
My mother married a man when I was about a little over year old that she had actually gone to the same Indian Boarding school with and he was a 2 years older than her. All the information that I gather from pictures and stories told by relatives is that they had a very rocky marriage at the beginning and I didn’t fit into their plans very well. I don’t really remember much about any time that I spent with her or her husband until about the age of 3. I just remember him being angry all the time. I know they drank a lot and they both bounced between jobs. Then my half-sister came along and then a year later another sister. It was sometime around kindergarten when I started getting bounced between my grandparents and other relatives. My mother and her family could not afford to take me along too or so I was told.
I only remember seeing my half-sisters during the summer and maybe Christmas time until about the age of 9 when they showed up one summer evening, packed up all my belongings and I went off to live with them. I thought it was only for the rest of the summer but had the rude awakening when I was being enrolled into school. I remember crying because I wanted to go home to my grandparents. I didn’t know this family and didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I had no choice and was forced to live with them. The next 10 years of my life I struggled to just survive. I fought back and through everything to make it to adulthood which I have written about already.
The one thing I haven’t really written about is my grandfather or the other men in my life growing up. My grandfather was my true father. His love, caring and guidance along with numerous cousins and uncles helped me survive what I was going through. None of them ever knew what was going on and most did not find out until I started writing about it as a way of dealing with the depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts over the last few years.
(My grandpa, Anderson Allen Sr.)
Some of my cousins have told me that they wish they had known but I don’t see how it could have made a difference we were all just kids. We had no voice and no power to change anything. I didn’t finally find my voice until I was about 16 when I got into a physical confrontation with my mother’s husband. The treatment from that point forward started slowly subsiding. I had to threaten his life in order to save mine. I enlisted into the military at 17, graduated high school at 18 and left home at 19.
You have one life to live. The path before you is sometimes not easy. If you can make it past those moments, when it feels like an eternity and that whatever is going on will never end, then it does get better. We have to face each day with the belief that it will be better than the day before. It’s all we really have; hope, faith, belief, determination and the will to survive. If we can do that, then the rest of our life is nothing that we can’t handle.
To those of you that have or had a father in your life, that cared about and loved you, hold on to and cherish those memories because some of us envy what we never got to experience. To those of you that are fathers, never be afraid to tell your children that you love them, hug them often and make good memories that will always stay with them.
Thank you for stopping by.
Have a great week ahead!
Suzanne
love to bake 
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