Denice Marciner

When you’re a daughter without a mother?

They say it’s easier to dislike the parent that stayed around. Because they become the fixation. And for while I gaslit myself into believing this. Sometime it’s true. And sometimes…. you finally realize who the parent that stayed is.

My parents were young when they had me. Mom 14, dad 16. I moved in with my dad and his then girlfriend (who later became my step mom) when I was about 4. And you couldn’t tell me that man didn’t hang the moon himself. He was at every football game I cheered at. Coached my basketball team. One time my head was hurting at school because my plait was too tight and he came to the school to take it out and redo it.

It wasn’t until he and my step mom divorced that I realize – the moon wasn’t even in his orbit. And the veil began to rise. He was at every football game because…. he coached the football team. (My brother was on the team.) But didn’t go to my cheer competitions. As a matter of fact when they got divorced he told me if I wanted to do sports it would need to be a sport my best friend was doing so her mom could take me and it didn’t interfere with him coaching a high school team. He coached my basketball team and when I got to middle school her stopped showing up to the games… even when he said he was “On his way.” I think he appeared at 1 or 2 of my volleyball games. Not only was the moon not in his orbit – but I realized how much he was not in my orbit.

I was starving, for attention, love, and sometimes food. So easily I went from a two parent household. I truly didn’t want for much. My parents made it happen. To calling my dad multiple times because he kept saying he was on his way to get me and my best friend food… he never showed up. And sleeping on a cot in an unfurnished room off 11th and Chanslor in Richmond, Ca.

When my dad moved me back to California and told my step-mom she was no longer allowed to talk to me. I still gaslit myself. Because I needed him right?

Maybe, I don’t know. So how does all of this effect me as a daughter without a mother? I didn’t have a biological mother, or a step mother to go to… I was completely dependent on him, and my granny. And a part of me thinks that was the point. To isolate me from the only support system I knew. My dad never talked about my mother, never anything bad. Never anything good. It was as if she didn’t exist. I don’t know if this was harmful or beneficial. In some ways it made me feel like I never missed out on anything. And in other ways I think it contributed to me not talking about it, not dealing with it.

One day – the fear that kept me from completely walking away was no longer there. It took losing a biological mother, a step mother, a pseudo mother, myself, and being homeless for me to realize I had to do something different and be different. I had to become an adult and figure out away to move past my childhood. Understanding I’m not responsible for my childhood but I’m responsible for how I respond to it. And if I can say – that’s the most annoying fucking statement I’ve ever heard. You mean to tell me I have to let them all off scot-free after they traumatized me?

To be honest none of the above listed things were the straw that broke the camerasback. It was watching how he disparaged my uncle who allowed me to stay with him when I was homeless, who set me up with someone to talk to, who bought me my first car. And my dad had the audacity to be upset. How can you claim you care about me but be upset at the one person helping me? To me that’s not caring – that’s narcism. You don’t care about me, you care that someone is doing for me what you can’t… or won’t.

So being a daughter to a father began to be easier from a distance for me. It was easier than hearing his lies and easier than making up lies about why I didn’t want to be around.

To this day I still struggle – I miss my dad. Every time I remember a good memory.. Or think of the saying “this is your parents first time on earth.” I remember two different feelings that remind me why I stopped talking to him. And remember it shouldn’t take multiple times on earth to be a decent person to your kids. Before I realized I was a daughter without a mother – He was my first heartbreak… And after I realized – he was my second.

How are you a daughter to a father – while being a daughter without a mother?