My earliest memory is the day my father and my mother split up. I was young, but I knew what was happening. They had been fighting all day, and I was hiding with a coloring book and a Capri Sun. It wasn’t a loud fight, like some. But there was something different about it and there was something final about the slamming of the front door when he left. My mother cried for hours that night, and the three of us were never quite the same. They filed for divorce a few weeks later.
Some girls grow up worshipping the ground that their fathers walk on. He picks them up when they fall down, protects them from the boys that don’t deserve them, and teaches them to change the oil in their cars. He is the first man that they ever love, and the first one that ever loves them. But some girls don’t get that. Some fathers have other priorities.Sometimes they leave before you know them, sometimes they might as well be gone, and sometimes they leave you standing in the middle of the room, wondering what you did wrong.
My father was the first man that ever broke my heart. He left my mother and I for someone else. I believe with all of my heart that he didn’t mean to hurt us, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. I love him with every cell in my body, but that doesn’t mean I have forgiven him for everything he put us through. It was my mother and I against the world when he left. I cried and screamed and cursed his name, I screamed at him and ignored him for months, and I hated him as much as I loved him. I was angry, and hurt, and I didn’t know what I had done to deserve being left behind.
That day, when he walked out the door, he gave me a gift. It has taken me over a decade to realize it, but everyone knows hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, I should never have yelled at him, or hated him, or cursed at him, or even thought badly of him. I should have thanked him, for giving me the opportunity he did. When he walked away, I should have seen it for the gift that it was.
Growing up without him, taught me to rely only on myself. Every broken promise taught me to be careful with my heart. And the hundreds on unanswered phone calls taught me that there is no one worth putting your life on hold for. Growing up without him taught me that I didn’t need a man to be strong. So, though I once hated him for leaving me, I have nothing but love for him now, because he taught me more in his absence than he could have by being present, and by not being there to protect me, he taught me how to protect myself.
