I'm over It!

Finally, I'm at an age where I can honestly say "I'm over it." It meaning my father. As Father's Day approaches like so many in the past, I'm no longer in the men section of a department store looking at items to buy my dad. It was all make believe inside my head. Because the world honors its most beloved dads. Growing up for me was very difficult, after realizing my father was absent from my life path. Yes, there were stepfather's, uncles, and male adult cousins. But my father was supposed to be there for me. My father has missed every birthday of my life. My father has never sat down to discuss his absences from my life. My father has always been a distance figure in my life. Even, after looking through the phone book's white pages hoping to contact someone, whom he knew with the same last night as his. And it's there, where I found his sister. Who introduced me to my father by passing along my number. When meeting my father for the first time during our first phone conversation he introduced himself as my daddy. I was taken aback by how casual those words came from his mouth. I hadn't seen this man for twenty-five years. After that, I breathed and giggled. Not believing the words he said.
I asked him, "Where have you been for twenty years?" There's something strange about a man that chooses to abandon his children. They never have a clear explanation for their absence. And they expect for a new chapter to open up without a real explanation. My father's words to me where " didn't your mother tell you what happened?"
I was confused and hesitant to answer. I paused and stated, "No, why don't you tell me?"
He's never told me to this day why he was never present in my life, nor does he know the impact it caused early on as a child. For twenty-one years, I've lived with the fantasy of my father in my head. I created him into a loving, perfect, caring, gentle man that had a reasonable life threatening reason for his abandonment. It was the only logical explanation for his absence. I wanted my father to be someone who loved and cared for me unconditionally. I prayed someday he would be there to pick me up if I fell down, to be at my wedding, to love my child, and most of all: I wanted to be daddy's little girl. I am his oldest daughter. I know nothing more today about my father than twenty-one years ago, after our initial contact over the phone. Some say "I should be grateful that he was willing to accept me through our initial phone contact."
I say, "It's my birth right, and he should've been a father figure from day one."
All has changed, and the fantasy is over, no more longing for his unwanted attention, buying fake gifts on birthdays, Christmas, or Father's Day. I'm over it. I'm over him. I'm over seeing the happy fathers' and children's images on a day that has no meaning to me.
Happy Father's Day to the men that have never abandoned their children.

Robyn Howzell 

Find me on FB