Two-Way Road to Recovery

By Salene Herrera Senior Staff Writer

For 14 years I blew out my birthday candles wishing for the same thing: my father. Some years I would waste my wish on a text message from him, or if I was feeling hopeful I’d wish for a visit. Each year I wished, and each year I realized that my wish would not come true. That was how I spent most of my childhood, hoping that my father would show up for me, but he never did. Though I could never recall a time when he was present, I mourned for that relationship for as long as I could remember.

I did not know how to feel anything other than hurt and abandoned by my father’s absence and the weight of those emotions weighed very heavily on me. I never got used to not having my father in my life, even though it was all I’d ever known.

When I was 14 years old, I went from not knowing where my father lived, to seeing him for the first time in what felt like years, and I was furious.

My father came back into my life and revealed that he had a girlfriend and she had two children, and they lived only ten minutes from where I lived, and suddenly all the pain that I felt had turned into anger. I felt cheated. I felt like he had completely replaced me and my brother, and even my mom.

For so many years my only wish was to feel loved by my father, and seeing him now with his “new family,” I wished I would never see him again.

My father was finally sober after years of addiction and he was trying to repair his relationships with me, my brother, and the rest of our family. I didn’t see it this way. I saw a man who had abandoned me, started a new family, and realized that he should have some sort of space in his life for me. Not because he wanted to, but out of obligation.

I disliked his girlfriend and her children without knowing them, I hoped that my father would stop being happy and feel the way I felt.

I wanted everyone to not only see that I was hurting, but I also wanted them to hurt with me. I was heartbroken. I did not make any effort to see him and when I had no choice I would do everything I could to avoid talking to him.

I sometimes look back on the way I handled this time in my life, and I feel sad for myself because I could have handled it with grace, but I remind myself that I was young. The pain that I wished for others was not a reflection of who I was or who I am.

I think a turning point for me was when my brother looked at me and asked me to “Just give him a chance. He is our dad.”

My brother is older than me. We are opposites. He is steady and level headed, calm, and collected, whereas I always went through life with my emotions ruling over me. He never asked me for anything, but he was asking me for this.

For the first time in my life, I put myself in my father’s shoes and tried to imagine his pain. I imagined what this must have been like for him, not truly knowing his children, being alienated by his family, having little control over himself, and wasting so many years of his life.

I lost a lot because of my father’s absence. I lost my home, time with my mother, my freedom, and my belief that I was someone that could be loved by anyone else, but I also gained more than I cared to admit at the time.

I was closer with my grandparents, I learned what being a strong woman was watching my single mother provide for us, I valued any time spent with my family, and most importantly I learned to feel deeply not only for myself but for others.

I looked at all that I had, and how this pain had made me stronger, and for the first time I was not angry. Instead, I felt like I could finally take a deep breath, and I accepted it. I accepted that our relationship was what it was, but I also accepted that I could change that. I accepted that I was hurt because I was holding onto this anger, and I accepted that holding on the way I was, was a choice.

There are a few things in life that we have control over, but we have control over ourselves. So, I chose to try to forgive my father, and not for anyone but myself. I decided to heal myself so that moving forward my life was not tainted by this anger.

I had to accept that my relationship with my father will never be what I always wished it would be. I will always be the girl who watched the door during Father’s Day teas at school praying my father would walk in, the girl who cried on her birthday, who hated my friends who had fathers, who never felt like enough. That will always be a part of who I am, and instead of pushing her down, I embrace her and all she has taught me.

I still hurt over all the time I lost with my father, but today I see him a couple of times a month. I see my stepmother, whom I adore, and my stepbrothers, who are kind. I see what his absence in my life has given me. It has made me who I am, someone who loves deeply, empathizes, and forgives and I am better off because of it.