Daddy's Little Girl

My parents divorced when I was very young. My younger brother and I lived with our mom, Dad lived in Arizona and we would see him twice a year. They both re-married and my family extended on both sides; from my dad’s new family I got Carolyn and Josh, and from my mom – Mike and Corey. For some reason I never got along so well with Josh (he grew up an only child), but I had no problem with Carolyn as my step-mom. I got along great with Corey but I hated – and I mean hated – Mike as my step-dad.

I think I was eight years old when my mom and Mike married and from my memory my mom, in all her wisdom, thought we should call him “Dad”. Carolyn was always Carolyn, and Mike changed to “Dad”. I don’t remember my mother deciding this, I don’t especially remember their wedding, I don’t remember if I argued against this decision or not. In recent conversations I have learned how hard the divorce was on my mom; the emotional toll of losing a man she loved to another woman, the stress and financial burden of trying to raise two kids on her own, the loneliness. She doesn’t recall ever telling either me or my younger brother to call Mike “Dad”, and looking back I think even at that young age I had a sense of what I should call the man raising us, and even if I didn’t want to call him that I wanted her to be happy again, I wanted to be like a normal family.

I loved to climb trees, and in the front yard of the house where we (my mom, brother, and I) lived there was a very climbable tree; my huge, leafy, secret sanctuary where spent a lot of time. I remember hiding there in that nook, tucked out of sight amongst the leaves, sullenly watching as Mike would come to the house to visit our mom and us. I don’t know why I never said anything, perhaps I was too young, but he never sat right with me. I couldn’t articulate or even recognize it then, but my dad’s absence had left a hole that I didn’t want anyone else to try and fill. I needed a dad, my dad; I needed him to be there through the tears and the triumphs of childhood, to protect me, to comfort me, to be Dad. I felt abandoned and I didn’t even realize it, a critical role was not being filled and I didn’t want anyone else to even try, and the very presence of Mike was a threat even before the marriage.

Through the years I unconsciously channeled all of my anger, resentment, confusion, and hate into this man I had to call Dad, this man that was trying to fill a role – steal a role, really – that wasn’t his. I got older I became colder, and after so many years I couldn’t put a finger on where this hatred stemmed from, it’s unknown source blocking me from articulating and moving past what I was feeling.

Since we began calling Mike “Dad” early on, we began calling our Dad “Daddy” to alleviate some of the confusion. I became fiercely protective of this differentiation, and I remember one day Mike walked in the door and said, “Daddy’s home!” I flew into such a rage, and as sat sobbing on my bed with my baffled mom beside me, I vehemently declared that he can NEVER call himself that again. To this day he never has.

I remember in junior high, when I got my first cell phone, my dad said that he would call me that day. I told all of my friends my dad was going to call, had it next to me all day checking often for missed calls just in case, spent all of track practice after school anxious that I was going miss it. He never called. My disappointment was palpable.

Despite his failures, I still held my dad on a pedestal. He was “Dad”. That was his role, and only his. My mom thought she was doing what was best for us, unwittingly putting another man between a little girl and her daddy, and giving him that title of Dad was the most destructive thing she could do. I channeled all of negative energy and emotion into him – in the end it became so dark I couldn’t see any of the good he did, any of the love he showed, any of the truth that filling the replacement role as my Dad wasn’t what he was trying to do at all.

My mom once asked me if I had the same feelings or problems with Carolyn as I did with Mike. The answer was a quick and easy “no”. When she asked why I paused a moment and replied simply, “Because she’s just Carolyn.” I never felt like I had to call her Mom, I was never asked to symbolically replace my real mom with her.

At my high school graduation I ended up in tears after my dad didn’t show up, asking my mom why they couldn’t have just “gotten along and worked things out.” It was only then that my mom realized she had given me a whitewashed version of the truth when I was young and never really explained things to me. In reality they divorced because my dad, among many other problems, was having an affair with Carolyn.

I can articulate now what it was that bothered me all these years ago. By feeling compelled to call Mike “Dad” (and not by him) I felt like I was being asked to replace my dad with someone else. And for all his faults, my birth dad is Dad and always will be. For a while I wished I could (and even debated if I should) start calling him Mike. But after all these years, that would break his heart. And my mom’s. And now I can differentiate – I can call him dad without feeling like I am betraying my Dad. I can appreciate Mike for who he is, what he has done, and how he cares for us.

I should hate Carolyn instead, by all rights, but I don’t. I should hate my dad for feeling “too overwhelmed” with kids only to have an affair with and marry a woman who had a kid, but I don’t. I don’t hate Mike anymore either. I’ve realized that I’ve spent the past 20+ years carrying all my hate and blaming it on a man that has showed us nothing but love (and patience). This hate is heavy, and I’m tired of carrying it.