Growing up raised by grandparents, aunts and cousins with no mother or father around. Growing up knowing less than of what was known as a child. Refusing to believe that a mother couldn’t have been that careless to make the same mistake 5 times.

I didn’t have what some would call a ‘cliché‘ of a father; one who protects their daughters, and toughen their sons. Scorn their daughters about the inches missing from their skirt or the amount of make-up they put on. Testing the men that she would bring home to introduce to her father all for him to be that overbearing, over protective, strong-willed man who only wants what’s best for his “princess”.

To this day I still wonder what it would be like to know who my father was, how he lived and what he looked like. Asking my mother these things would only lead her to babble on like an idiot, to blame the very mother who raised all of her kids as to why we ‘hate’ her. The simplest gesture in towards that subject would cause her to feel paranoid and defensive.

I didn’t ask to be here but it is my right to at least know my father’s name. I fear she don’t even know what that is let alone if he is truly dead or not.

Living without a father isn’t all bad, I’m not a lost and confused juvenile, hell-bent on being the very thing my mother once was. Yea I come from a broken and dysfunctional home but instead of dwelling on that and being miserable for the rest of my life because of it, I chose to learn from their mistakes so I won’t make the same. Some would say that my grandmother was my mother and my father but I would beg to differ. She never gave me the wisdom only a man of age would know of, she didn’t have the experience [like my mother have] to know what makes a man tick or to walk out to never return. She did teach me about being a woman, she taught me about self-respect and elbow grease; how to get down on your knees to work, clean, cook and take abuse.

I honestly believe if I had a father figure in my life who gave a shit about their children, my grandmother wouldn’t have been the frustrated, abusive, neglectful old women she is. Being fatherless taught me to not be like my mother and my grandmother; my aunts and my uncles. It taught me not to have kids with someone I know I don’t like, love, or particularly care for. I taught myself to respect myself and don’t let a man abuse you in no type of way; I had to learn that on my own. I had to learn that some men are womanizer’s and only out to get one thing. I didn’t need a father to make mistakes and to learn from them.

My life is fine not knowing who my father was. I’m not going to hold my mother’s mistake over her head; I’ve come to terms with how I got here. She made the mistake 5 times.

So before you think just because I’m Black and I have neither my mother or father in my life that I’m some ghetto, uneducated, drama-driven, naïve hood-rat who watches BET and stand out in the rain for the next pair of Jordan‘s. I’m different from that and I work hard every day not to be that. I am who I am broken home or not. Some of these women out here who watched their father leave them are only acting like that because they let that affect them in such a way. The only way to get back what was taken from them is to not be that way. Not to lay down with these dead-beats just to get up and say they’re no good. Then again, what do I know?

So I would like to wish all of you out there who at least know who your father is [well at least their names] a Happy Father’s Day. Be grateful and fortunate for what you have now because in an instant it can be gone.