She doesn’t know that I left to get my life together so that it could include her.
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This would be a surprise to many that know me, but I have a daughter.
I don’t talk about her. I don’t really have pictures of her. I don’t talk to her. I don’t see her. I don’t refer to her, because I’m embarrassed—I don’t want to be that guy, the absentee dad.
I do think of her often though, almost every day. She just turned sixteen. I imagine her driving in her car. I imagine her going on dates and dances. I imagine her in school plays, and maybe playing softball like her mom did years ago. I don’t know if she’s doing those things, but I imagine she’s having a good life. After all, don’t we all deserve a good life?
Sometimes, I feel like I shouldn’t have the good life I have.
I’m married, own my own house, run several small businesses, and I make money doing what I enjoy. I have great pets, have decent health, and eat balanced meals my wife and I prepare. Do I deserve these good things? Perhaps. But in mind, I feel like I got a cake-walk.
I wasn’t the single mom, I’m not the sacrificial step-dad, I’m not the hurt grandparents. I wasn’t the one abandoned to pick up the pieces. I wasn’t the one trying to make ends meet to provide for a child.
My daughter’s mother married someone new and he adopted my daughter, saying I abandoned her. This wasn’t really the case.
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My daughter was conceived with my ex-girlfriend after we went to the mall with her friends. It was a one night stand with someone familiar. I liked her, and I enjoyed dating her, but I was pretty much a drunken asshole at the time.
I was fiscally irresponsible. I used people. I kept having my utilities cut off. I lost jobs. I was a loser. I was resentful that in my early twenties, I was going to have to settle down, trade in my wild ways, and provide for a family. I couldn’t do it.
After trying to make it work for a year, we broke up. I got even more wild, and lost yet another job.
I moved three-hundred miles away from my college town back to Chicago, my childhood hometown and place where I still had friends and resources. I got my old job at an ice cream shop and moved in with friends from my church. I had to get my shit together.
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As soon as I moved, my daughter’s mother married someone new and he adopted my daughter, saying I abandoned her. This wasn’t really the case, as I had moved to get my life back on track so I could build a better life that would include her.
It also hurts that she knows about me, knows I left, but probably doesn’t know my side of the story.
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I’ve sent cards throughout the years and mailed letters to my ex pleading for some level of involvement. I never get a response.
My ex’s family still keeps in touch with my grandmother, where I hear secondhand how my daughter is doing, what she’s up to, and how good of a step-father my ex’s husband is. They have built a life together, and seem to be doing well. And it makes me feel horrible that I brought a child into this world, and not be the person I should have been at that time.
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It also hurts that she knows about me, knows I left, but probably doesn’t know my side of the story. She probably doesn’t care what my side of the story is. All she knows is, she was born and I left. She might know more, but as this piece started out with, I tend to imagine.
I do hope that someday she and I could reconcile on some level. She’ll probably have a lot of venting to do, but that’s okay. I can deal with that; I’ve earned that anger, I know. But I want her to know that I always wanted the best for her.
My biggest regret is not having had a child, but for thinking that I could do better by her by leaving town.
Photo: Getty
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* NOTE: This article was published merely months before my daughter looked me up, and now we have an awesome long-distance relationship!
Thank you to everyone who this article affected, and may this inspire reconciliation and beautiful relationship mending.
Steve, I understand what you are writing about, and I sympathize. I’m the daughter of an absentee father myself. As much as I feel for your situation, your article focuses on you, your expectations, and your wishes. You say that you’ve done a lot of growing up, which is wonderful. But the fact that you can’t even speak of your daughter and pretend that she doesn’t exist because you don’t want to “be that guy”? I’m going to call bullshit on that. You ARE that guy. Period. You abandoned your child. Your contradict yourself saying that you didn’t really abandon… Read more »
She HAS looked me up, about 6 months ago, and it’s been awesome. Thanks for your feedback!
Why not contact here now, send her this article, tell her you made schmuck choices and have pulled your life together and want to give yourselves, her and you both, the opportunity to meet, to address any deep hurts that your past lifestyle may have caused her and build a new relationship if she was amiable to that? Why not address amends to her directly. It may be the start of a new and fabulous relationship. It may be brutal but if you don’t try you’ll never know and she’ll never know where your heart is or was otherwise.
The article did state that I have had reached out several times, without a response. However, she eventually contacted me, a couple months after this article came out. We are talking now and having a great time. Thanks for your encouragement. You’re about the only responder without past undealt-with baggage. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 😀
As a single mom myself, to a daughter now nearing college, I may not see this article in the spirit it may have been intended. My ex husband still lives in the same city that I have raised my daughter in, and he sees her at his convenience. I have allowed her the space and ability to form her own opinion and formed one she has. Her father has been in and out of her life, staying in the same city, but simply avoiding her for three years until a child support court date created a bigger opportunity for him… Read more »
Elizabeth, I’m very sorry about the situation with your husband, and congratulations on doing a great job as a single mom. I was your daughter (figuratively speaking) 20 years ago, with an absentee father who would pop up whenever he felt like it, to wreck my life anew every time. You are absolutely right in everything you say – a girl, especially at a vulnerable teenage age, would feel all those things and more, and sadly, it takes years of hard work and self care to get over a parent’s abandonment. The writer of this article at least had the… Read more »
The retitling of the article I feel definitely put the women on defense and maybe stirred previous issues the mothers and children have gone through. Re-read the article. I have several times tried to involve myself in my daughter’s life, and was essentially outed before I even moved back home. I was homeless and without a job when I left the small town her mother was living. I had no choice really but to accept the offer an old friend gave me: his couch. When the streets in a town that had no shelters was the option. Unsure what you… Read more »
Were you sleeping on your friend’s couch for fifteen years? That’s what I don’t get. Why didn’t you fight for your daughter, just as you did yourself? You’re still justifying abandoning her. Yes, the cards and letters are nice, but the court is where a true parent would go, if he truly wanted to be a part of his child’s life. The stepfather/adoptive father didn’t just magically make that happen. He fought for what was important to him. You have a lot of growing up to do, hopefully that happens before your daughter matures and sees right through you and… Read more »
no you don’t get a happy ending. There are repercussions for seriously bad behavior and you will have to live with that until you die. You gave your daughter up for adoption. She has a dad. You are just a ghost .
You obviously have not read the article.
I wish I could talk to my dad about why he left. He left mom when i was 3. We have a distant relationship and dont talk about it. Whe a horrible marriage/divorce sitation happened to my son with his ex repeatedly pushing him out of his kids life I encouraged him to fight for them. The court is not always the answer if a woman wants you gone she can find a way. It was ugly, over $10000 in attorney fees that none of us could really afford. The kids getting put in the middle of it and lies… Read more »