At 20 years old, I haven't seen a lot but i feel as if I have seen enough. Pretty much all my life, I have grown up around the same 2 people, that being my mother and my brother. They are the most consistent people in my life and I am thankful for them. Although it's not uncommon to grow up with a single parent, it especially feels like I'm the uncommon one. Pretty much all of my friends and acquaintances have both parents and leaves me to think of several questions. How would my life be different if I had a dad in my life? Could I be able to have all the same possibilities that all the people with "parents" do? Am I lacking something that only a father can give? Am I not good enough? Why does it have to be me without a father? I don't think i deserve this.
There are points in my life when I have experiences with father-like people such as my brother's father buying me things and taking me places but at the end of the day, I'm not really his son. Another person was a person i considered a father through my child to mid teenage days. He provided all the things that a father would but there became kind of a disconnect because he was a father from afar. He always gave good advice and all that good stuff. I wish i could talk to him today but unfortunately he passed away less than a year before I graduated from high school. I don't know if my decisions would've been better had he still been around but all i know is that i will never be able to get the feeling back that i had for my "substitute father."
My mother tells me that if i feel like i need to talk to someone that i should talk to my pastor, head elder, etc. but i can't. I believe i used to and probably still try to overcompensate for not having the love of a father by trying to help others not feel the same kind of hurt that i feel consistently. I surround myself with friends and family hoping that it would help, and sometimes it does. How can I grow up to be a father to a child one day without knowing the responsibilities of a father and how to love like one? As I typed this post, I fight back the feeling of tears that will never come because nothing can break me down since i am already broken. One day i hope to find a way to change this feeling. Of course if i talk to others about this, they're going to go with the "Let God fill the void in your heart" stuff but it's easy for them to say with them having both of their parents. But as i end this post, I think about all of the success stories of single parent kids and negative stories as well and hope and pray to be in the former and not the latter.
