I recently met with a teenager who’s parents divorced at 4 years old.  I was amazed by her story and her different perspective on the issues children whose parents have a tumultuous and even toxic co-parenting relationship.  It is my hope that her words will touch you as much as they touched me.

Andrea’s Story

The last time I saw my dad – my real dad, not one of my mother’s stunt doubles– is one of the fuzziest, most vague memories I have.  Quite a time after the divorce and well into my Mom’s new marriage, he showed up at our new house and took me to the new Star Wars movie.  What I do recall from that visit is that everything just felt scripted and mechanical.  I had always been taught manners and ways of being polite so I said please and thank you at appropriate intervals, remained silent unless spoken to, and pretended like I knew what was going on in the movie.  At least the boy was cute and the graphics were cool.  We went to McDonald’s afterwards and then I was taken home.  It felt liberating to walk back up the sidewalk to the house where I knew I could be myself again.  Like I’d be with my ‘real’ family.

This visit didn’t leave a lasting impression on me.  I continued about my life, I didn’t question his whereabouts, motives, or life.  I didn’t continue to probe anyone for information as to when he would be coming back to see me again, or when he would call.   As I went to sleep, I didn’t think about my Father and how he felt about me; the thought never even crossed my mind.   During the day I was more interested in playing with dirt and rocks.  And I never wondered why that was until I was old enough to look at things from a different perspective.  All I knew was that when he left, it was out into oblivion, somewhere obscure or perhaps to the back of my mind where I wouldn’t dwell on him until my mother brought him up again.  I was about 6 and the experience could not have been more awkward than if it was a complete, total stranger picking me up and taking me away.

You see, when I was growing up with my Mom, my Dad (who I never referred to as Dad, but by his first name incidentally) was only discussed occasionally.  There was one particularly significant memory from when I was about 9 in which Mom took us shopping but had to make a call when we parked in the lot.  She made me and my sister walk into the store alone and told us she’d come in a minute, and to sift through the clothes while she was talking.  It was probably 20 minutes later when out of curiosity I walked to the front of the store, out of the automatic doors and looked for our car.  From the sidewalk I spotted it, she was still buckled into the driver’s seat, bawling.  Absolutely crying her eyes out, I mean ugly crying, snot and all.  And screaming while she furiously punched the steering wheel.  My sister came to stand next to me and asked why she was crying so hard.  I rudely asked her how I was supposed to know since we’d been in the store together the entire time but I knew.  She only cried like that in one instance and one instance only and that was while talking to him.

Eventually she came in with slightly swollen red eyes to help us shop.  I hesitantly asked her who she was talking to, feigning ignorance.  I knew who it was, I just wanted confirmation.  She sighed dramatically, still perusing the clothes on the rack, and said without looking at me, “Your Dad.”  Then without any questions on our part flooded us with details about how she had, “Only asked about the support check,” and how he flew off the handle calling her this, that and the third, not leaving out a single name or adjective.  But I was used to it.

When I lived with my Mom, my Dad wasn’t really my Dad.  He was the sperm donor.  An unfortunate mistake.  The reason why she hadn’t finished college.  The asshole.  The liar.  The heartless son of a bitch.  The dead beat dad.  The spineless excuse for a man.  The loser.  The alcoholic.  The man who made me and then didn’t care about me.  Just the nastiest person on Earth.   These were all her descriptions, and I nonchalantly listened to her tirades about him when they occurred, which was rarely but never anything less than a traumatizing ordeal, until I was about 14.

I was indifferent about him: passive, impartial, detached, uncaring even.  He wasn’t ever notable in my life so it didn’t make a noticeable impact on me when he was or was not spoken of.   She was at full reign to speak about him as she wanted because I didn’t know anything different to defend him, nor did I want to.

Eventually, I had ownership of only two or three other memories of someone who was once my Dad and they took place in my earliest at ages 2 and 3.  Until I was 16, he was never that man who I remembered so faintly, he was who Mom created.  And she was never one to flatter.

I saw him as more of a Boogeyman or rather an idea of a person.  He was just a check in the mail every month and if that money wasn’t in my Mom’s hands, he was a bully who low balled the person who was actually taking care of me and making sure I had things like food and a home.  She showed me all the nasty worded emails he sent to her in response to her pleads for that month’s support, I heard the indistinct screaming on the other end of the phone on the rare circumstance my parents were talking, I heard all the stories of how difficult he made the divorce when I was just an infant.  As the years went on and I never got calls on my birthday or Christmas, always pointed out by my Mom, I became more and more detached.  Resentment wasn’t really an emotion I personally held because he was painted as someone who never cared about me in the first place.  If you never had something to begin with, then what have you lost?

So now I’m 18, and after meeting him again at 16 I’ve done much introspection at what direction and mentality I’ve taken with not having my biological father to raise me all these years, and without a solid male figure whatsoever.  I’ve especially reflected on who my Mom painted him as versus who he turned out to be.

When I hear the old Freudian-esque saying, “Girls look for in their partner traits that their father had” I get scared.  I didn’t have a father, nor did I have a reliable, safe, or relatable father figure in any of my step parents and infrequently in my Mom’s boyfriends, who were quick to come and go.  The father I was told I had was terribly verbally abusive, mean spirited, and evil hearted, who only sent any money to help me to prevent himself being in prison.  That was it.  He didn’t want me or anything to do with me, my Mom did, and he made sure to make her cry each and every time they spoke.  What message did that subconsciously send me?  Luckily I’ve done such introspection and know that verbal and mental abuse in inexcusable and unacceptable, but how many young girls (and boys) out there, find this to be the norm or even precedent?

When I think about graduating college, I make a mental list of who cares enough to show up.  My father wasn’t there for my kindergarten or 5^th grade graduation, prom night, the day I passed my permit exam, my first job, when my art was published in a museum and later I designed the cover of a magazine, and so many more of my most precious memories.  Why would he care about college?

When I think about the wedding I may have one day, my heart instantly drops as I realize that I have never had the father that walks every other little girl down the aisle.  Maybe I’ll have to ask a grandfather, an uncle, a close family friend, my fiancé’s father.  Perhaps I’ll just walk alone.  I’ve been made to feel alone for my entire life anyways, what’s to stop me now?

The day I graduated high school was and still is one of the worst days of my life.  Neither of my parents were present.  Neither of my parents cared.  Neither called, neither sent a card, graduation congratulations, or a present.  As a side story, I had fallen down a flight of stairs the week before the ceremony, nearly broke my ankle, and I sat in the ER until 5 am with a friend.  I walked up the stairs in the gymnasium (wearing a cast) and onto the platform while my principal handed me my diploma whispered, “Smile!  You look so unhappy, this is a good day!” as he shook my hand.  I did it to appease him but I wasn’t happy and immediately resumed my frown while I walked away.  Some kid’s parents had screamed for their children, had stood up and clapped and stomped their feet so loudly the vice principal had to pause between announcing names, one Dad even brought a blow horn for his daughter.  No one from the stands yelled for me when my name was called.  Only my friends in their seats.  I hobbled off stage trying not to fall, back to my seat, and after everything was over, as I watched everyone taking pictures with their family, hugging their parents, envious of their crying mothers and their beaming dads, I stood in the doorway saying goodbye to friends alone on crutches.  I tried the entire time to wonder how their parents could care so much and openly cry in public when mine didn’t care enough to even ask me my accomplishments.  I had to explain to everyone’s families why no one was there, and I could tell they pitied me.  Then I waited at the front of the school in the rain without an umbrella until my ride came to save me.  I didn’t even have grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins there because my mother had alienated my father’s side was so severely, and her side didn’t come either.  I was completely alone.  But what could I have expected?

Through all of this however, I don’t blame solely my Dad.  I also blame the other person involved.  There are two sides to every story, and then there exists the truth.  My Mom may have been low balled by him, but that did not excuse estranging me from him.  That did not excuse telling me all the nasty adult things that I learned from such an early age through her funnel to me from what he said in a private conversation.  Some things, kids just shouldn’t know.

I also have recently come to live with my Dad’s sister and her husband, and their three kids, my cousins.  It’s not their fault, or completely my father’s, that I haven’t gotten to know them.  My Mom kept me from them as well.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it was not the right choice for her to have made to decide that since a child’s father was mean and nasty over a telephone, that his family should no longer have access to his daughter.

My Dad leaving forever isn’t excusable, and he is not let off the hook in my personal life.  But I’m making a conscious choice to make that decision based on how he has treated me, not on how he has treated my Mom 10 years ago, or how he speaks to anyone else.  She was by no means perfect, either.  It’s also very important to realize that when someone feels attacked, and when that person harbors deep guilt and regret over what you are attacking them over, you cannot expect their reaction to be pleasant.

What I’ve learned is that yes, he paid his child support, but I understand that it must be painful to be seen by your child as only a check in the mail or some monster whose only purpose is to make their mom cry.  What I know now that I didn’t know then was that he was having his own demons to battle and fight.  That divorce is hard and kids suffer.  I’ve learned that it was my dad’s responsibility to keep contact with me but it was not my mom’s right to ostracize him or his family from me.  It was unfair to all of us.  Lastly, by and large the ostracized and un-loved thinking I developed wasn’t instinctive, but a byproduct of what my Mom taught me.   I have learned that children live what they learn.