"I have a Dad and a Father." followed by What Does That Mean?

Ok, well look first the title is a little confusing, well not really, I just get that question a lot. “What do you mean when you say that you have a Dad and a Father?” Are my parents two men? No, it mean that my Mom got divorced when I was four and I look up to the man that raised me and not the guy that gave me half my life. (Because it takes two to make a baby) I understand that today the fact that families aren’t together is not new. (I hate that term “Broken Family”, we are all broken, just because the two people that had sex and made a baby aren’t together doesn’t mean that the family is broken)

Ok sorry kind of went off topic there, what I want to talk about is the relationship (or relation-shit) that I have with my biological father. I used to look up to him, and admire him, when I was four. When I was eight I remember him giving me a Game Cube, I was so happy that he had made it to my birthday. Then I don’t remember anything about him until I’m twelve. I remember him asking me, “Hey! When are you coming to visit me?” (He lived two and a half hours away from me) and me replying, “I don’t know when my Mom can take me”. The same question continued across the years and he could never find the time to come pick me up and when he did it was for a weekend and we never did anything but hang out with his new girlfriends or me play games and watch cartoons all day because I had no idea what the hell there was to do on the Metropolitan area of Puerto Rico.

I remember the days that I would talk to him and my Father would want to talk to my Mom and they would get into heated discussions, I never knew why until I was fourteen and it hit me like a pile of bricks. He never made time for me, I had to leave my life, sacrifice my time to go “hang out” with him at the other side of Puerto Rico (I was living there at the time) and at the end of the day we ended up doing close to nothing. I know I must sound so selfish but bare with me here ok? I’m not saying I hate him, I just hate the fact that a man tries to buy my affection with gifts and money is not the man that I want to grow up and admire, a man that can’t make time for the child he so “misses and wants to see”. The “man” that once left his sixteen year old son in a bar, with strangers he just me to hook up with an old flame. A “man” that, told his son that he had to shut the fuck up and do what he was ordered to do, even if he was on break (I worked with my dad, I signed a contract and everything, it lasted a day haha!), a “man” that took me to Puerto Rico as a graduation gift so I could spend time with him and every time we went out he was on his phone promoting his business. A “man” that told his son, that’s in college, that he could not survive by himself unless I had at least three to four other room mates and that he thought it be better if I moved with my Mom and Dad to Texas. (NOTSURVIVE!)

This is a letter to you “Father”, it started as a blog post and it ended up with me getting angry and letting it out because fuck you. Here I am, I see you, as you really are, a puny “man”. I’m not saying I hate you, I’m saying I’m angry, angry at the fact that you try to buy my affection with material things, and when I need help to pay my rent you tell me you don’t have money for that right now. Here I am telling you off because I looked up to you and you let me down, but that’s fine because I have a other people to look up to. So thank you Mom and Dad for showing me how to be a real man.

#ir