I married him on September 1, 1995. I was 23. He was 24. My then official step-daughter was 6. The first 3 years were amazing.
Then it went to shit.
I was miserable for years. Most of my twenties and the first half of my thirties were lonely and frustrating. I raged like a crazed animal. He shut me out and shut down. She was the brightest spot, but in hindsight I see what a failure I was to her.
I did the best I could with what I knew. I’m trying so hard to do better this time around.
Looking at pictures from back then recently felt like a slam to my gut and heart. It was a mistake to marry him. Oh, I know I wouldn’t be or have what I do now if I hadn’t traveled that path. Not at all. The family I cherish now wouldn’t exist.
But still, I did it for the wrong reasons. That’s my standard and often repeated behavior. I wanted her to have a mom. My ego let me believe I was up for it. Wrong.
I wasn’t in love with him, but I did love him. Like most of them, I tried to conform and ignored the red flags.
I thought we would be friends forever. I am such a naive fool. He’s moved on. I missed him for awhile. Then I was really angry for a long time. Now I’m resigned to the sadness of it all.
There were a lot of smiles in those pictures. But there weren’t any pictures from the later years. For good reason.
Today is the birthday of my biological father. I never met him and I never will. When I traveled back to Texas for the 2013 holidays, my mother told me that he had passed away a few months before then. She didn’t want to call me with the news. Better, she thought, to wait until we were together. Just one more piece of information she kept from me until she was ready to share it.
I regret never going to see him. I knew where he worked and the town where he lived. It was less than an hour from me for forty years. Now it’s too late. I may never even get the chance to see a picture of him. I’m told I look like him. I think I physically resemble my mother, but I have nothing to compare.
It’s possible to grieve the loss of someone you’ve never met. A bit surreal, for sure, but the pain is genuine. Of course, I don’t grieve any familial connection. I grieve the relationship that never was, that never will be.
I knew nothing of his existence until I was eleven. That’s when I discovered my daddy was actually my step-father. It was another ten years before I would reach out to my BD through a phone call. He shunned me, told me never to call him again and to tell my mother to stop trying to ruin other people’s lives. As a mother myself now, I can imagine how devastating that was for my mother to see her child go through. She was willing to call him back herself, but I was done.
Yet, I kept a little spark of hope in my heart that someday I would see his face, touch his hand, find solace, and maybe answers to at least some of my questions. That dream has died along with him, another loss from which I may or may not recover.
I won’t say that it “wasn’t meant to be”, nor do I believe I’m better off not knowing him. It simply is what it is. Tragic. Sad. Unfair. I just wish I had a photo of him…..
