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When she passed away I was relieved. It sounds harsh but it’s the truth. She was finally out of her misery. I know she was never happy, even with the narcotics. She needed a way out and that was her way until it was over. She perished the day she chose to abuse herself.
Bleeding internally without the actual bleeding.
After I left that house, I thought if life fucked me hard, I want to fuck someone harder, fill them with everything I got. Show them I didn’t back down just because I came from a shitty background. I am a good person and nothing like my parents. I will never be them. I worked hard to be the man who came from nothing and turned into someone worth fighting for.
For years, during my childhood, my soul collected wounds. The only salvation I had back then was my friends. They saw me. And helped. I have tried to do my best and rise above it all, my travels became an essential substance to me—getting far away from that place ensured I wouldn’t be stuck there like them.
When I watched how my friend’s parents treated each other. The love they gifted to one another through one look was enough to melt you in place and get you jealous. It all fed the urge to find that type of love.
It gave me hope.
Zooming out of the fluctuating tides, I look over to Lenny, taking another long drag as thoughts flood me.
I never met my biological father. My mother never thought to mention that the person who raised me—another piece of shit—wasn’t by birth certificate my father.
She guilt-tripped me into thinking he never wanted to do anything with me.
When I first started traveling to get far away from the Looney Tunes who was my mother, I went to Las Vegas where his family still resides now.
I heard stories about him. Seen pictures. I look exactly like the father I never met. The one my mom kept away from me because he was sick.
The doctors found out he had cancer when I was born. In order for me not to get attached to a dying man, my mother decided he should not see me. He tried to reason with her but nothing penetrated her impermeable thick skull.
My sick father lived for another ten years before cancer struck again, and this time, took him for good.
I could’ve enjoyed ten years with the man who could’ve saved me from my mother. The one parent who should’ve cared and looked after me.
She never did.
Along with the men who raised me, they were a pair of junkies with toxic personalities that led to betrayal more times than I can count. They never married. Simply two fuck ups who got high together and stayed for convenient reasons. After a while, he left. My mother was left brokenhearted with a kid she never wanted in the first place and a horrendous lifestyle.
Another man who left us.
A million questions used to bother me at night about my father.
Why didn’t he fight for me?
Was he too sick?
But what about his remission?
Why he didn’t come to visit despite my mother?
Did he love me?
Why did he send someone on his behalf to hand me his old Mustang when I turned sixteen? That’s when I found out about him. The man who showed up told me a few stories and gave me my birth certificate but my father was already gone.
The eyes of a stranger stare back at me. A man who tells me my real father is not the man who left us but another man who left us. “Look Dean, your father was really sick and also a stubborn man. He wanted to see you more than anything but your mother made it difficult.”
“She’s a junkie, he could’ve easily taken custody of me.” I take the old picture he gives me of me as a baby in the arms of who is supposedly my biological father.
“He took that photo anywhere he went to show you off. He used to say, that’s my boy, Dean. I named him after my father who was a good, loving, and honorable man.” He tells me another story instead of giving me a reason why this was difficult.
He sighs. “I know that you had to go through a lot and you will face many more obstacles but you always have a family in Las Vegas. You are more than welcome to visit us whenever you want.”
I puff out my disbelief. Now he tells me I have a family in another city.
“One day everything will make sense.” He finishes before he hands me the keys, “Your father wanted you to have it,” he points to the parked Mustang. “Take care, Dean.”
