Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

After about the 90th angry text message I have finally admitted to myself that my daughter's father is and was a complete waste of time. I started thinking back to when we first met, thinking of falling for him... thinking of making another human life... and I am scarred by these thoughts. The funny thing about it all was that I didn't even want children. I came up pregnant because I skipped a shot and then he talked me out of getting rid of her. He had me convinced that we were going to be together forever. Now I realize there is no such thing as forever, and the only reason he wanted me to think so was so that he could have his own idea of a big happy family and then once he got it he decided he didn't want it anymore. It's funny how that works. He put entire states between us and hasn't sent me or his daughter so much as a greeting card.

I am inducted into the great club of Single mothers... or more specifically.... young single mothers... because of an idea... a hope... a thought... a promise... a kiss... a caress. A lie. And I am betrayed by it. I am betrayed by my own heart. My daughter is the best thing in my world right now. There's no doubt about that... and that's why I feel all the more foolish for choosing the father that wasn't going to be there.

My father was one of those sometimes dads. Sometimes he'd call, someimes he'd keep his promise and take me someplace, sometimes he'd be there for me when I needed him. And those sometimes moments were then some of the most treasured moments of my life. I was so determined to have a father that I would allow my feelings to be regularly shit on because of an idea... a hope... a thought... a promise...a lie. And I don't want that kind of reality for my daughter. I don't want her chasings ghosts when all ghosts really want to do is lie down and be dead. Or in this case, lie down and be deadbeat. I don't ever want to see that hurt and betrayed look in her eyes when he doesn't call, or doesn't show up and have her at such a young age, riddled with feelings of inadequacy.... wondering what it is about her that makes her so hard to love.

Fahers don't realize how much they're needed. They don't realize how much their opinion and their love matters to their daughters. They way they treat them will effect their whole lives. It will effect the way they treat themselves... and everyone else. And I really just don't understand how someone, no matter the circumstance, could look into the face of an innocent child that they created and not want to be there. I have about 5 really close friends who have been in my life forever, and all of them, including the one guy, had absent fathers. And they're not all black or from urban enviroments. This poisonous inability, or rather, unwillingness to parent traverses all backgrounds and ethnicities. Two of them had sometimes dads, like me, and Thom, his father left when he was 2 years old and he hasn't seen him since. Angelica got sick of having a sometimes dad, and when she was 13 told him never to contact her again, and he eagerly obliged.

Now I know that some of you will tell me that there are specific circmstances, things that could not be helped that perhaps played a part in a certain father's not being able to be there all the time. My rebuttal is simple. If I can be there, while going to school, while working full time, while trying to realize my artistic dreams, while being exhausted, while being broke, while being depressed while feeling fucking impatient, angry, apathetic and generally disgruntled... why is it so difficult for some fathers to fight through their struggle and reach what should be the most important part of their world? Why is it that they don't feel that there is no obstacle too large or too great to keep them from their children?

I was freinds with this guy who had a then 7 year old daughter who sent hims cards and letters in prison that he never replied to. When I asked him why, he told me it was because he didn't want her to remember him as the prison dad. The girl's mother wanted to bring her up for visits because the little girl would cry and beg for her father, but he said no. He didn't want her to see him that way. That was the most selfish and unfair answer I had ever heard in my life. There was a little girl begging to be a part of his life, begging to love him in spite of his indescretions and he turned on her for the sake of appearances. It was stupid. She knew he was in prison whether he wrote her or not, so why try to hide? Do I think prison is a good enviroment for a child? No, but children need their fahers... and if it's through steel bars, then so be it... they made that mistake and now they have to face up to it and be a father anyway.

This has turned into an angry rant but my heart hurts. It aches for my daughter and the possibility of a broken heart by the one man who should love and be there for her unconditionally. For myself and the countless others who have experienced and will experience just that. I am not a man-hater. This is not a generalization of every father... I am just talking about the ones that I know to be absent for reasons well within their control. I do not often allow the foulness of hatred in me. It is too evil. But it is getting harder and hard to fight and deny it room in the face of these new disappointments. And I fear I am losing. I fear I am losing badly.

END

I hope it comes around for you!!!!
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Mercedes Benz 380

Every word Izzy, everything about your post, needs saying and I am glad you did. I had my Stella at 39! That's how long I resisted the pleas from men to have their child, because I wanted any child of mine to have a father, I wanted the help and partnership of a father for my children, because my own father was absentee as well, in fact I called him "uncle dad" which made him cringe the few times I did see him and I was glad about that, because I wanted him to feel some pain too, yes, indeed I did, for his own good, why, I wondered, should I bear it all?

My daughter, and her father, have a great, loving relationship and I take complete credit for it. I sacrificed 16 years, living in the same town he did, working shit jobs and living mostly in isolation from the stimulation I needed. I challenged her father to take care of her on weekends, hoping he would reap the joy of fatherhood that so many fathers are too self-indulgent and ignorant to realize. There were rescues from bad scenes and cheap weekend girlfriends, there were promises broken, but he had to face it, I made him face those weak alternatives to the joy of Fatherhood.
He finally got it, and now swears by it, even has another child with his new young wife, indeed he is a good father. When he finally got it, and made big of her birthdays, dressed up as santa, listened to her little forming and growing and loving voice, and sent roses to her in school on valentines day, it also was healing for me. But it was not easy, and I have found so many times it is not a subject many like to discuss, and here you are my dearest of dears, again, bringing up the "taboo" topic of men and their juvenile regenerations in our times.
It is a book that needs to be written, it is a travesty that mothers baby their sons, that women have allowed their children's fathers to remain children.
H

izzy... I can lend you my father a little if you want... no garantía that you would survive the experience, though... Absent father, too present father... I don´t know... a buddhist father maybe?

yesterday afternoon in the birthday party of a gemini-friend her seven year old nieta asked each one of the presents our ages and if we "already" had kids (some say yes, some no). Then she looked at me seriously and said "will you have kids"?... is not a strange question at all but it took me by surprise at that moment... and I said laughing "no idea, really". And she said also so serioulsy "I will, but before the 39"... and I said "it sounds healthy, do it!!!!!!". I mean sometimes it works, sometimes not. Not everything happens exactly as we wished or wanted, but there is always change´s possibility in embrace what already is.
I wish you the best!!!!!!!!! (thinking twice... I won´t send you my father via air-mail... ). More photos of the growing little-girl, please?

When I was growing up I was never told of what happen to my grandfather on my dad's side. It wasn't until so many years later that I found out that he and my grandmother divorced while my dad was still a kid. So he was not around to raise my dad. If I have kids I'm going be around to make I raise them so I don't end up like my grandfather.
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Bushmaster 2000

kayla, the bio-dad of your beloved daughter isn't around. What's there to fantasize about? She will imagine a marvellous super-creature only if there's a glimmer of hope.
Will she send this man father's day cards? with each card, part of the fantasy will be formed.
Will he ignore them? Every non-reaction will add to the picture.
Hester forced fed her ex to be a dad.
A friend of mine had to do the same - but it's a lot simpler if you're in the same town. Mothers sometimes do that 'same town' thing if there's a glimmer of hope.
But where there's none, why sacrifice?

Eventually, you need a free hand to choose your location, your environment, her education. There will be a father figure somewhere, maybe several somewheres depending on what life offers.

But no illusions. i don't believe in a tooth fairy existence. Protective bubbles are often burst. Reality with a heap of support and courage and humour.

And as Hester says, it's a taboo subject but only because it's the kind of subject that we talk about far more than write about. Keep writing.

Hest thanks for the insight. I appreciate the sacrifices you made to make sure your daughter had a relationship with her father. I'm sure it must have taken a lot of courage. Kansas is just not the kind of place I think I can ever make home. And I don't want to force my daughter on a father that doesn't want to be there. I would rather him be absent than be there when he didn't want to. It is hurtful watching someone you love making excuses to get away from you. Feelings of inadequacy and rejection arise. I don' want that from her. So I won't chase him. I will just remain hopeful. Judih I don't believe in the tooth fairy either... but I can have a small bit of hope left inside me yet. I have to believe that something extraordinary can happen. I have to believe in order to keep myself from feeling the hurt of the impending failure of my daughter's relationship with her father. And I agree that the subject is unnecessarily taboo. The longer we hide it, the more leeway we give them to be absent without consequence. Thank you all for taking the time to read my angry rant. It's good to have someone to sympathize with.

--k