Bruised and Battered: Strength and Resilience

I was bruised and beaten, cuddled in the corner of my boyfriend’s dorm listening to his frightening screams pointing at all the things I had done wrong. I didn’t always do “wrong”, but to him, everything I did was wrong. Everything was unacceptable. On numberless nights, he laid his hands on my body, my “precious body”, as my mother called it. Her precious daughter’s body was now a place where he had his way with, and did whatever he pleased with it. And I allowed it. I would attempt to find a new guy who I thought was better, but would be proven wrong shortly after. I did this several times, but it wasn’t better. It was always me versus them and they always won.

I know now why I am like this, why I can’t find a healthy relationship with a man who wants more than just their way with me. It is because the only man I ever loved, my father, let me down. He left me to be independent at one-hour old, and to go through life alone when I wasn’t capable. Because of this, I have no sense of a good man simply because I never had one in my life.

I’ve loved and I’ve lost but I’ve always appreciated the loss. I’ve always appreciated when someone walked out of my life. I would laugh with ease at the familiar feeling of being left. My own father neglected me, left me for scraps and abandoned me. Maybe it was because I wasn’t what he wanted, maybe it was because I cried too loudly after he released me from his rarely present arms, maybe it was because I’m simply me. My father left me at the first opportunity he got, he wanted out of the responsibility of being a father again to a child who was dependent on him. According to my mother he was late to my birth, I was his second child, my step-sister was the first. Maybe that was it, I wasn’t his #1 and he didn’t want a #2. I loved my father before I even knew him but he lost me before he even knew me. I didn’t deserve what I received, my mother always told me. She would reminisce about her past and attempt to paint a colorful picture-perfect family with my father at the center, as if we were one of those white picket fences. “Oh, remember when…she would say. “Never mind,” she would say again, shutting herself down with a pitiful, apologetic look on her face as if I needed apologies from a woman who was always there for me. Here’s where I talk about my favorite person, my father-figure in female form.

August 20th 1998, I was brought into the world by a person who is everything to me. I remember sitting in the small, desolate, one-bedroom apartment we shared, and looking into her heartbroken eyes. I, a puny and oblivious, six-year-old, could sense the pain and fear illuminating from her broad, ever restless body. That night I saw her strong, never restless body giving out. Her light was fading away but I had not yet understood it. I had not yet understood why she was worried about us, because to me, she looked strong every day. The woman I knew put on six inch heels to walk around a hospital eight hours a day, with no make-up and beautiful, and a smile that could light up a whole room. That same night, she made me promise it would be me and her forever, I have kept that promise my whole life and continue to live by that promise.

I remember my first heartbreak. Jordan, my tall, dark, and handsome middle school crush, broke my heart by leaving me for Madison, the most popular girl in school for the simple fact that she had bigger ‘jugs’, as he so vividly described. This was the first instance my mom became my father-figure when it came to love. I didn’t admire myself because no guy loved me the way I wanted him to love me. All they wanted me for was for the obvious reasons a guy wants a girl – for sexual attraction and pleasure, which I didn’t possess at thirteen.

I looked in the mirror, sucking in my pudgy stomach and admired my body from different angles. I didn’t like a single one. “You’re beautiful, Alicia,” my mother said. “Well, you have to say that,” I said. “You’re my mom. No guy looks at me that way.” My mom looked at me as though I was her prized possession, her everything, and her world all rolled into one, but I didn’t see myself in the way she did because I wished my father would’ve told me I was beautiful at least once. He left at the first sight of my being, how could I possibly know if he saw me as beautiful, or even if the thought ever crossed his mind. It’s been twenty-one years since I’ve heard my father’s voice or seen his face besides pictures. I don’t even know what his voice sounds like. From the pictures I had to beg from my mom, he’s a dark, chocolate skinned man about 6’2” in height, a bald round head, and about fifty freckles spread across his chubby face. I can see myself in him – I have freckles under my eyes and freckles lining the skin on my hands similar to his, I have a chubby face that my mother always grabs when she thinks I’m being silly. I see myself in his image but I don’t want to. I don’t want to be seen in my father’s image because I am not him. I want to be seen as a better image of him. But despite my yearning to be better than him, I cannot love myself because I see my never present father in me.

In my sophomore year of high school, I thought I found my sweetheart as everyone always thinks they do until it comes to an abrupt end at graduation. Though mine went on longer than high school, it was unhealthy and toxic to my health. Every day I felt as though I was drowning, not making it anywhere in life, and he pulled me down further so that I couldn’t reach the surface. I envisioned the surface as a place similar to heaven, where the sun shone brightly 24/7, where there was no pain, and where my worries were put to ease at the drop of a dime. This “high school sweetheart” would beat me and yell at me for simply not doing the dishes the right way or for putting my Psychology of the Brain textbook down too hard. There was countless nights when makeup would mask my scars and tears in order to face my mother. I feared telling my mother because I knew she would only blame two people: my father for not being there when he was needed the most and my boyfriend for laying his hands on her precious daughter. Many of my friends criticized me often for not leaving him but, often leaving causes death or worse and I made a promise: my mother and me for life. I blame my father, there were nights when I wished he would swoop in like a Batman or some other mystical hero with a cape and batmobile and save me from my misery, but at the same time, I wanted to be independent. I wanted to prove to him that I could live life without him – I mean I was just fine besides this and even this I was handling alone. It’s what I learned how to do best. I came to the realization that although I wanted him, I sure as hell didn’t need him.

Living life without a father has impacted me tremendously and more than I thought it would. When I reached the age to truly understand the meaning of not having a father, a part of me wanted to say fuck it, but the other half wanted to question “Well, where the hell is he?” As my life went on, I found myself doing both. I questioned where he was when I needed him the most – at my high school graduation, my senior prom, my first love, my first heartbreak, and my many other milestones, – while I also said fuck it I can do this on my own because my mother raised me to be independent and be a boss while doing it. I know I am not the only girl nor the only person in this world to be raised without a father, which makes it even more significant but not any easier. Significant because it shows that we don’t need them – though it’s great to have a father, it’s also possible to be without. My mother has replaced my father as a father-figure in my life and for her I am thankful. Life still goes on. I am now twenty-one years old and will soon graduate with a degree in psychology and will continue to study and get my Masters. It’s very possible. As bad as I’ve longed for a father because I thought that was the only way to have a successful relationship with a male, I have proved that it is not. I am now engaged and engaged to a wonderful man, who has shown me the way a male figure should be in a women’s life. Though my father won’t be there for any of the other momentous milestones in my life, I now know that it is okay. I have the most loving mother, fiancé and friends to push me through life the way I should be pushed. A girl doesn’t need a father to find love, they just need to be shown the right person – a person to love everlasting.