Kayla Mena

My Journey to Adulthood

When I was about 10 years old, It was always me and my father. I never had a mother figure in my life to teach me how to be a lady or have that motherly love. My father I believed did his best to raise me with little knowledge he had about raising a girl. He worked a lot so I barely saw him amd when I did it was for a few hours at the most and then he would go to sleep or so I thought. At most nights I would wake up and head to his room just to find he was not in there. He would be gone all night at times and I assumed he was at work, but little did I know he was sleeping over his girlfriends house. We had a dog growing up, actually 2 so they were my company most of the time as I was growing up. As years went by my father became more and more angry and would take his anger out on me. I would be scared to talk to him or even ask a question because I didn’t know what will happen. As I was growing up I had to learn to cook for myself and entertain myself as I was normally alone or had the 2 dogs keep me company. My father was usually not home or stayed in his room and did not want to. E bothered. As a child I was confused and felt so alone and sad. I wondered and thought to myself “What did I do wrong?” To this day as now I am 31 years old I still wonder because of how I grew up, it affected me hard and now I suffer from depression. To this day I continue to try my best to overcome the many obstacles I face into being a adult. I had to learn a lot on my own and for that reason I struggled very hard to get by in life, without my father and without my family to help me. To this day I still question myself on what I did wrong to have receive this type of abuse growing up from the verbal to the physical abuse, I endured. I’ve never felt loved by my father and my family, so today as I am a adult I still look and acquire that love I’ve never received.