Called mother to wish her a happy father’s day. It’s our in-joke. Funny-ha-ha. I don’t have a father. Obviously, I do, but he has never been my father. I have never been his son. I’ve written about this before.
Has that made me less of a man? Yes, it has. Every bit of being forward and aggressive and truth-seeking, I’ve had to collect from context clues, from hearing what the people in my world had to say about it. But it is overshadowed by the regressive side of having a single parent, one who is given to notions of, “well, if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen,” and the learned helplessness that comes along with it.
It’s taken a lifetime to catch up and build my other half. Life is hard. Having two parents who can raise you in a balance will make you more of what you could’ve been without.