Let me start by saying this whole blogging thing is completely new to me. I’m only writing this to help myself make sense of my life and my current state of alone. Don’t get me wrong, I am happier than I have been in a very long time. I finally have my life together…for the most part. I have a job that I love. My own little place that almost feels like home, which is something I have not felt in more than 10 years. I have the most amazing friends that I love and cherish like family. I’m working very hard at making myself happy, and have learned to let go of MOST of the negative bullshit in my life. Sounds great, right?? Well, I still have some work to do. Let me explain…
I’m a 30 year old single female. I’ve never been married and I have no children. I was raised by my agoraphobic and psychologically unstable mother, who was always too concerned about her own issues to take notice of mine. She taught me how to be codependent and that life isn’t whole unless you have a man to take care of you. And my step father, who was always just out of reach emotionally and cared much more about money and material possesions than real life. I have an older sister, who I love more than anyone in the world, unfortunately she inherited the psychological issues my mother has. And a younger half brother, who was basically raised as an only child and treated much differently than Krista or I. Don’t get me wrong, there was love in our home, but it wasn’t expressed the way I needed it to be. It was expressed in either gifts or punishments. My step father made it clear that he was a STEP father, and nothing more than that. He took care of us financially, but when it came to emotions the only one I ever saw from him was anger. We rarely heard I love yous, or got hugs or kisses. I will always love and respect both my mother and step father, for stepping up and raising my sister and me, when the man responsible for us was nowhere to be found. I love Chris because he’s the only father figure I have ever had, and I am forever thankful for him.
My biological father, who WAS my everything for the first few years of my life, left when I was 4, and never returned. That very event shaped much of the issues I’m trying to make sense of today. The absence of my father consumed me as a young girl. I spent my entire childhood wishing my dad was there, wondering what I must have done to make him leave and stay gone. Wondering if the void I felt was mine alone. Did he miss me? Did he think about me on my birthday?? On Christmas??? Ever???? I tried many times, with no luck to contact him. I lived in the same home he shared with my mother until I was 17 years old, even had the same phone number all those years. Still, he never showed up. The last time I saw my dad was 12/24/85. Why do I remember that? It was Christmas Eve. Every single Christmas after that I wished for him to return. That makes 24 un-merry Christmases for this girl. This explains why I’m still not a fan of that Holiday.
I gave up trying to find my missing dad when I was about 12, after a heartbreaking phone call to my paternal grandmother who didn’t remember me. Recently I got back in touch with him. Not because I tried…and especially not because he tried. His girlfriend found my sister and me on Classmates.com. After ALL those years I finally got to hear his side of the story about why he was gone. It all made sense to me. My mother’s and his story added up for the most part, and I forgave him for all the heartache he caused me instantly. I was secretly thrilled that I was finally going to get to know the man who I spent my entire life wishing, dreaming, and longing for. I was finally going to get back to being Daddy’s Girl. That was 7 years ago, I’ve heard his voice twice, but still have not met him. Why?? Because he still makes no effort whatsoever to know me. He still rejects me. Yes, I get the random texts every few months telling me he’s thinking about me and loves me. But, that’s all I ever get. And again, I’m disappointed by him. How can he get a second chance to be my daddy, with little to no questions asked, and just blow it off? After 20 something years, how is he still not able to muster up the effort to see me?? I look JUST like him!
I am proud of the woman I have made myself, with no thanks to my father. I have overcome so much to get to where I am today. I’m smart, funny, caring, beautiful, and most of all, I’m STRONG!!! I am far better off emotionally than my older sister. But, unfortunately I have some serious issues when it comes to romantic relationships. My father was my first experience with the feeling of rejection. Since then I have hungered so much for the love and attention of men. As early as my preteen years, I remember trying to get older men to pay attention to me. I learned very early what gets a man’s attention. I had 2 very inappropriate relationships with men in their 20s when I was just barely 12 or 13. Funny that my own mother allowed these interactions. The first was with a member of my step father’s family. Although we never actually had intercourse, there were a couple years of sleep overs and lots of touching and inappropriate behavior. My first sexual experience, also not intercourse, was around that time, with a man who was a construction worker working on a neighbor’s home. He was told by my mother, that he could use the swimming pool in our back yard whenever he wanted. Well, he took her up on that offer, and he used more than the swimming pool. After that experience, I knew exactly what it took to get men to like me. It felt good to finally get some of the attention I wanted so badly. I never dated boys my age in high school. I would always shoot for the much older men. At 19 I got pregnant after a one night stand with a guy I knew for all of maybe 30 minutes. After speaking with friends, and trying my hardest to get back in touch with the impregnator, I decided to have an abortion. That would be the start of a very unhealthy pattern in my life. I honestly cannot even tell you how many men I slept with between my teen years and my early 20s. But if I had to guess, I would say 40, 50, maybe 60…ish. I would never be able to name them all, hell I probably didn’t even know all their names. Are you proud of me now, Dad?? After a good 10 years of f*cking any and every man who looked at me, I began to realize that I still felt alone. Maybe this wasn’t the attention I had been craving.
At that point I entered into a relationship with a married man. Now THAT made me feel wanted. He showered me with attention and constant gifts and compliments. Then he would go home to his wife at night. After a few months he left his wife and 3 year old son and moved in with me. Shortly after that I got pregnant. 5 months into my pregnancy I found out his wife was also pregnant. At that time I had my 2nd abortion. Yep, 5 months into my pregnancy. Yeah, that means I was showing. Yeah, that means I heard the heartbeat, found out the sex, picked out a name, and planned to be the mother of this baby boy. I rationalized with myself, told myself it was ok because “how could I be tied to a man who could walk away from his babies, much like my own father walked away from me? How could I expect a man who left his wife, 3 year old son, and unborn baby to be any better of a husband or father for me or my child??.” I stayed with that man for 2 years after that. After the first few months the “new and exciting” wore off and he began cheating on me with his wife. This, my friends, is what you call Karma. I was well aware he was cheating since his wife would periodically call me and let me know, or show up at my home with her new baby and 3 year old son. It took me 2 whole years of this before I mustered up the strength to get out. Since I really wasn’t strong enough to walk away from the only man I thought actually loved me, I ran instead. I ran away from my safe secure home in Orange County, where all my best friends were, where I knew and loved everything, where I grew up. I ran away from the only place I ever knew as home. I ran all the way to Las Vegas. I can’t say I regret making the decision to leave, but I do think I could have handled things differently.
For the first year that I lived in Vegas that same cheating lying man came to visit me often. He still told me he loved me, and I still believed him. He began giving the attention and compliments he showered me with in the beginning. It didn’t take me long to get pregnant again, this time with twins. Well, after millions of tears and countless hours of begging him to let me move back home to CA so that we could make this work, I finally realized, this man didn’t really love me. There was that same feeling of rejection that I felt so many times before. So, again I had an abortion.
After that I promised myself I was done with lying cheating men. I found a great job, and began to love my new life in Vegas. I started to make friends, and began to feel content again. Of course I was still on my constant hunt for the man of my dreams. The one who would love me forever unconditionally the way I always dreamed. I started spending time with a younger and much more emotionally damaged coworker. I was not attracted to him physically, but he gave me attention in a non sexual way. See, that was me trying to change the type of man I was always after. A younger guy could never get the upper hand, right?? Things progressed with him, and although I knew I was never in love with him I pretended to be. He loved me so much, and that’s exactly what I thought I wanted. He helped me get through a very trying time in my life. I was diagnosed with cervical cancer shortly after we started dating. I leaned on him a lot during that time. Our relationship became more of an addiction than love. We moved in together, and I found it more and more difficult to pretend to love him. So, I up and moved out one day. No warning, no consideration at all. Just got up while he was at work, packed all my shit, sent him a heartless email stating “I am not in love with you” and I left before he got home. But, I was so uncomfortable with the thought of being alone and losing that unconditional love he had for me that I apologized endlessly to him, and made him take me back, still fully knowing that I didn’t love him and didn’t really want to be with him. Of course, to show him how much I cared I turned on the sexiness, because I still knew exactly how to make a man want me. Needless to say, I ended up pregnant…again. Since he never wanted children, and we both knew our relationship couldn’t handle the stress of raising a child, guess what I did?? Yep, I had another abortion. Keeping count?? That makes 4. We stayed together after that and our relationship became more and more unhealthy. We drank constantly and argued about EVERYTHING. Things became physical, sex completely ceased and it was clear that this wasn’t going to work. This was the first time that I know for sure that I broke someone’s heart. He never knew that I was never really in love with him. But, I knew all along that I didn’t love him, yet I strung him along for 4 whole years.
Since the 4 year fake relationship ended not quite 1 year ago, I have fallen back into making the same mistakes. I don’t know how to fix the relationship I have with men and sex. But I do know that I deserve much more than what I’ve been getting. I throw myself at every man I meet. I fall in love completely and whole heartedly with anyone who shows me the slightest bit of attention. I take a man’s word for gold and believe everything that comes out of his mouth. I picture myself married to every man I date. I’m constantly on the hunt for my future husband. I’m consumed by the desire for love and affection from a man. I shop around on dating sites, I dress provocatively, I get drunk and take random men home with me, and I f*ck on the first date. Shit, who am I kidding, I don’t even need a date to f*ck. I have once again gotten pregnant, and again aborted. That makes a grand total of 5. I had a major STD scare; which thankfully turned out to be a false alarm. I’m 30 years old and still making the same exact mistakes I made when I was 19. Yet, I still don’t know how to change. I finally took a step back and realized I’m probably going about this whole LOVE thing wrong. But, since I refuse to take the blame for the state of alone I find myself in, I have done a lot of reflecting. I’m not a bad person, even though I have done some bad things. I’m just a product of my upbringing. Growing up without that loving male role model has left me a damaged woman. So, where do I go from here? How do I fix this??