Looking back, I don’t remember the
temperature of the water or the way the
waves crashed on the sand. I just remember
that moment—the divide between a
daughter and her dad growing a little bit
wider.
I was hurt. I was angry. And underneath it all,
I felt abandoned.
He broke up our family. He wasn’t paying
child support like I thought he should. I
hated splitting holidays. I resented both of
my stepfamilies. My stepfather’s family?
Terrible. My stepmother and her kids?
Worse. And worst of all, I felt like he let it
happen. That he let her wedge herself
between him and his daughters. I found out
he had to lie to her just to take us to
breakfast—and that only deepened my rage.
I believed no one—no partner, no spouse, no
outsider—should ever come between a
parent and their child. But I watched my dad
let it happen. So I hated him. And I had zero
respect left.
But no matter what he did, it never felt like
enough—not to me. Not back then. He took
us camping every year. Sometimes it was
just sleeping bags and a cooler in the desert
in an old Chevy E350 van, or road-tripping
from San Diego to Seattle. He was the
assistant coach on my softball team. He
even coached for a season.
He taught us how to ride quads, how to jet ski
and water ski, how to cliff dive and water tube. I
remember him pushing me to the edge with
water skiing. I wasn’t good at it, and I hated it. I
tried until I was exhausted, crying in the water,
waiting to be pulled back into the boat. One day,
I hit my limit. I was done, tears streaming down
my face, body aching, pride shattered. He
finally pulled me in. I didn’t understand why he
had pushed me so hard. It felt like too much.
When my grandfather—the only stable male role
model I had—died, it was like the last bit of
grounding disappeared. I felt alone. Betrayed.
Abandoned by all the men in my life. That pain
shaped me. I chased love in all the wrong
places, fell for the first man who showed me
attention. He ended up being emotionally and
psychologically abusive. Looking back, it all
makes sense. I had this gaping hole in my heart
that I was trying to fill with anything that looked
like love.