The Hard Way: I am a Bastard

Posted by AdrianacloseAuthor: Adriana Name:
Email: adriana@ofsexandlove.com
Site: http://ofsexandlove.com
About: Adriana is a young married woman and, most of the time, she enjoys it that way. What time she isn’t spending doting on her cats or bugging her husband, is spent doting on her countless blogs (where she tends to be a little too picky and a little too blunt) and lusting over sex toys. She enjoys reading, Sci-fi television and webcomics as well; it wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate to call her a geek. Website: http://ofsexandlove.comSee Authors Posts (17)

When I was finishing up elementary school, my sister fell ill and eventually succumbed to a blood disease. It was around this time that I came to know that she was only my half sister (we shared the same mother) and that her father was not my father. Up until this point, this was a man whom I had called “Dad” and I had never thought much about it. Some children would have been devastated but I felt an immense wave of relief wash over me to know that this man, for whom my scorn had been growing continually, was not in fact my father. I did not know anything about my biological father but I knew that it had to be better than being the child of my mother’s ex husband.

Over the next few years I would ask my mother questions about my real father and, at first, it seemed as though she was giving me answers. She told me stories of a man who was married but had gone back to his family instead of staying with her. Yet, the next time she would tell me about a guy who had died in a car accident, even going so far as to give me a name. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that these answers were, in actuality, lies and that my mother had been picking and choosing facts about real people she may have known at one time in her life. And the man who had died in the car accident? He had actually been a friend of my mom’s brother, a friend with whom my mother had never been involved.

At one point, I had hope that I would meet the man who helped to give me life. I imagined him walking into my life, happy to have found the daughter he may have never known he had. I would daydream that he would want to make up for the lost time and be in my life forever more. He might have a family and I would have siblings who would become my friends. Yet, as my mother’s stories piled up, my questions faded until I simply was not asking anymore. I learned not to question her about the truth. For whatever reason, she could not or would not be able to tell me the truth about my father. Perhaps she was trying to protect herself (maybe she did not even know who my father was) or me (maybe he was an abusive loser from whom she wanted to protect me) but my only source for the truth had dried up.

I was angry for a few years. How could I not be? I felt as though I couldn’t be whole without knowledge of my father and, even if he was a horrible person, I wanted to make that decision myself, not have it made for me by my mother. And while I know many successful families are nontraditional, it simply seemed as though I was missing out on the “real” family experience. As my teenage years passed, so did my anger. I was able to let go of my anger as the hormones of adolescence subsided and I learned that, justified or not, holding on to that emotion was not productive and damaged the relationship I had with my one parent.

When I met the man who would become my husband, I had slight hopes that I would be able to develop a loving relationship with my future father in law, finally enabling me to have a positive father figure (by then my mother was long divorced from her first husband and the role had been obviously, painfully empty for quite some time). If you have read my posts regarding my in laws, you will know that such has not been the case. In fact, the interaction I have with my father in law could barely be called a relationship at all. In some ways, I feel as though even my last resort has failed.

It has been many years since I have asked about my mother about who my father is and, although I sometimes still daydream about meeting him and having him be apart of my life, I have more or less given up on the idea. The truth is, even if I met this man and he turned out to be a good man, someone whom I would gladly called “father,” it would still be an incredible change which would evoke intense feelings. And that is only the best possible scenario; in all likelihood, the truth may be something much more difficult to handle. At this point in my life, it is much easier to accept that I have only one parent and not have hope at all (so that it cannot be dashed). That is just the way it is and I hardly bat a lash when someone inquires and I reply “I do not have a father.”