November 2023

My best friends and I have mommy issues. 

One was angry, one did something that could not be forgiven, and mine never apologized. 

It’s weird how we load them with the brunt of our parent anger, like villains who stole our childhoods despite giving us the chance to have one. They are both sides of a coin with two heads; no matter how we flip, it always lands on them. 

What about our fathers? 

How many male role models did you have growing up? A friend asked. 

In my mind I ran through a list of authors, artists, or celebrities. Surely I had at least one male role model but who? My dad never crossed my mind.

I’m not sure if it’s his fault that he couldn’t give me the things I needed because he was never taught himself. Like most men whose fathers cannot satiate their hunger, he buried it in the women he loved until five children grew and he became Dad without a clue how to be one.

I wonder how many mothers have had to pay for father hunger. 

As a boy, I learned that Dad was too busy with work, or too tired and distant to share our hopes, pains, and dreams of what it meant to become a man. Perhaps, he simply didn’t know how.

I looked to other boys, envied them, was bullied by them, shut out by them, collected by them, and became them. I learned to shut out other boys and turned to women to hold the crumbs of my manhood, and thought it would be okay. 

I wonder how much pain the bodies of women carry because our fathers never.