Daddy Issues in Therapy

Apparently, most people think I come from your average middle-class nuclear family. I think that’s really interesting since it couldn’t be further from the truth. I only ever talk about my mom and brother, and that’s my whole family. I dress simply and have worked near full time since I was 16. I treat myself with nice shoes but most of the rest of my money that gets spent goes to helping with bills and other family expenses. I save as much as I can and I’ve hoarded over 20k because I’m scared that I won’t be able to make it.
My parents weren’t the most, um, well-behaved kids. My mom came from a small town and my dad from farmland. They both were in relatively strict houses with abusive parents. I don’t really know how they met, but something brought them together. My parents were young partiers, drugs, alcohol, and mixing EDM. They did get married in Reno and bought a shack in West Virginia before I was born. I was born there, but we went back to the house my mom grew up in in Michigan just after I turned one. It was there that my brother was born. But my parents didn’t get along very well with my grandpa and my dad had warrants out for his arrest back east. So we drove out West to embrace the party life and evade the police.
My parents both liked to party but when I was about 4, my mom started going to church, stopped drinking, stopped doing drugs, and even stopped smoking and drinking coffee. She didn’t want my brother and me to suffer because of her addiction. She tried to get my dad to clean up his act, but I guess he didn’t care.
Every father’s day I don’t do much of anything. It’s my norm to now have anyone to celebrate. But when I was 4 I still had a dad. But I remember missing the father’s day event at my daycare because my dad wouldn’t go. I have two distinct memories of him. The first being him making my brother and me tater tots and the second him crying and holding me while telling me that my mom was going to take us back to Michigan without him. That’s it, he was never a father to me.
My father was emotionally abusive to my mom and unfaithful. As my brother and I got a little older she noticed that we would mimic their fights. She decided that it wasn’t safe staying with him anymore. My mom also sat my brother and I down and said we were gonna leave. I got up, grabbed a bag, and packed all my clothes and was ready to go.
Just before my 5th birthday we left and went to a women and children’s shelter. My mom took some members of our church and some police officers to our old apartment to get all of our things. He gave them a birthday present for me, a Disney princess skip-it toy. It’s the only thing I have left.
A little while later I remember spending a lot of time in the courthouse as my mom divorced my dad, gained sole custody of us, and got a restraining order from my dad.
My mom didn’t have a job and had to take care of us. We stayed in that first shelter through to my birthday. We moved to a transitional housing program when I started kindergarten. Then we moved across the city. We lived in 3 different apartments in the poorest area of my city. The last apartment complex had bullet holes in the door of the unit closest to the street. My mom started going back to school and we lived off student loans and welfare. We didn’t have any family or any good friends to help us, my mom had to do it all.
There was a time that I hated my mom. I was mad that this was our life, that she didn’t have time for us. I was mad that she wanted to go back to school and that she wanted to follow her new dream at our expense. She had a degree and could’ve settled, but didn’t. We commuted to a nice school and I was so jealous of my classmates. I wore their hand-me-downs and didn’t have a choice for clothes. I was jealous of their houses, their stability, and their extracurriculars.
But now I am so immeasurably grateful for my mom. She worked so hard to take care of us. You know it wasn’t the best circumstances but she gave us a good life. Sometimes I look at her and my heart just hurts to see her work so hard. I want her to have the best.
I think ultimately my upbringing has made me who I am. I don’t like to tell people about this, and I have never divulged so many details, because I don’t want to be pitied. I don’t want people to walk on eggshells around me. I think I’ve been forced to grow up fast and I hope that I’ll be an independent adult. I work hard, study hard, and have plans. I don’t wish that life on anyone but it happened and I just have to do my best. And if no one can tell then I guess I’m doing well enough.