Daddy-less Daddies Girl

Why I want to find my biological father. 

I cringe and cry at this statement. I know it is not a chapter my own; I have to admit to the comfort it has brought me speaking about my family tree with others and learning that they have similar and different trees. I guess this is the human experience. But it’s just not enough this comradic comfort. I never gave it much thought until I reached my 20’s. I asked a few times after I had first heard about B but after being shrugged off I learned to not ask and pushed that reality as far aside as possible. 

I feel and felt this was a bit forced. My mom is a proud ass woman and is never wrong, helping me find B while I was still a kid would be too much for her, too much of an admittance of wrong. That and she was steeping in the glow of her newly formed relationship, now no longer an affair, proud to be a unit. She was done with whatshisname (Pat) and I should be too. The mind is an amazing thing, it will take the trespasses of others and turn them into rigged blocks in front of lives path in the form of self imposed rules and understanding of the inherent harsh reality that is life. 

My therapist says this is not reality, that life wants to facilitate all of ones desires.

One afternoon I was at my dads house, this was a few months after my parents had officially split. I heard the land line in his room begin to ring, I rushed to the phone and it was Pat on the other line. “Hi Sweet Pea” he says, “Im glad you're home”. Knowing I am often running off to be outside on our beautiful island of the North West San Juans, he asked that I stay home so he and my mom could talk to me. I agree and hang up the phone. I sit there next to the phone on his dresser, looking out the 70’s style window in his room and just know what the conversation was going to be. My clairvoyant nature as a child was real and tangible, the countless hours I spent outside in nature greatly outnumbered the amount of time I was inside. This frightened me, so I picked up the phone and called my closest friend at the time, Jenny. 

The phone rings, I’m starting to freak out I know it’s real, I know it’s real. Oh thank god she picks up!
”Hello? My parents want to talk to me and I think they are going to tell me Pat is not my dad.” I blurt it out before I even announce myself. She calmed me down and did her best to assure me that was not the case. We hung up quickly, maybe the shortest conversation I had ever had with her. I honestly can’t remember the hours between my two quick phone calls or how I got to be sitting on my twin bed in the basement of my moms house smashed between my parents, the most family like time we had in years. My memory picks up at the red crying faces of my parents as they tell me what I already know. I think unofficially learning this for myself lessened the blow but I was still a mess. Why is it real? I don’t want it to be real. I was so scared. Everything in my life was so insecure and I just couldn’t believe this shit was fucking real. They assured me everything would be fine, Pat would officially adopt me, they would help me find my biological father if I wanted. I and it would be fine. 

Shit was not fine. I felt like I was fed to the wolves. During the divorce I begged to live with Pat, he was a hard ass navy man but I still felt like I connected with him more than my mom. I was told my whole life how much of a “Daddies Girl” I was and it was a bit true, I feared the man and loved him dearly. What a way to learn to love. He taught me useful things and encouraged me to be a confident tomboy. The request was denied, I was a young impressionable girl and needed what?—her mother, so mommy was what I got. Pat realizing his love for me would cost him, believing the price too steep he opted not to adopt me in exchange for two years worth of ill matched Christmas gifts. 

Daddy-less Daddies Girl. That will be the handle of my next Grindr or SA account. 

I feel like the fate of my parental experience was fucked by the adults around me. I became a difficult teen, dwelling in my basement void of family or social connection. The feelings of isolation I felt then are very reminiscent of the fellings I have had during this Covid-19 disaster. In the years following we moved away from the home and people I loved to a foreign desert one of the social, cultural, and geographical kind. The cultural shock I had was surprising, I had never witnessed inland America. I dreamt of submerging myself into the cold pre-radiated ocean waters of the Puget Sound. I lost the connection to my identity and the understanding of who I was in all manners, no longer the friend of Jenny, explorer of nature, daughter of the Tatman family. I was now miss Terrel, a temporary guest in the home of the newly married couple. Being labeled ‘difficult’ though my emotional attention and sex seeking I felt comfort the most when getting high and fucking. Knowing who I am now it is hard to believe that I was ever in trouble for what I was doing then. This is still my main source of comfort and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I am just learning to harness its power.