Fatherless.

I'm feeling oddly personal today, so I'm going to talk about my father.

His name is Andrew. He's about 6'4", he was in the Marines, and when he was a teenager he looked a lot like Ashton Kutcher (I think it was the eyebrows). He was adopted, and never knew his real parents. He was always smart, artistic, and a bit lazy. According to his adopted sister (my aunt Crista), he always got straight A's in school, without ever seeming to try.

And that's all I really know about him.

You see, my father left when I was three years old. The reasons as to why he left are numerous and complicated, and I won't really get into that here. The point is, I haven't seen him since.

Naturally, this left my mom to play both parental roles (which, of course, explains my general disregard for gender roles). Being that she herself was still somewhat of a child, this made for a very erratic and atypical childhood. But I digress.

My mother had quite the string of boyfriends after that. There was Breck, a Star Wars loving, pot smoking, Dungeons and Dragons playing hippie. There was a filipino guy she met when she worked on a fishing boat in Alaska. And then my sister's dad, who was in the Navy (but eventually got kicked out).

I suppose he was really the closest thing to a father figure I had growing up-- namely because he was the one who was around the longest. When they separated, he continued to live with us... partially because they didn't want to separate my sister and me, and partially (I suspect) because he couldn't really take care of himself, and my mom really couldn't take care of herself either.

She dated more guys after that, and today she's still kickin' around on the single scene, but I didn't have a whole lot to do with her various boyfriends after a while. She's never been particularly good at picking decent men.

But despite all these male figures in my life, I've always considered myself to be without a father.

I sometimes envy my friends who have both parents, even if their parents are divorced. Most of the time, though, I don't wish my father had stuck around, because his absence has shaped a large part of who I am today. People sometimes ask me if it was hard not having him around, but frankly, you can't really miss what you never had, can you?

They also ask me if I would ever want to meet him. And honestly, the answer is no. The thing is, I really only have half memories of my father: one from when I was about three, and I woke up to see him standing above me and smiling, and one where I remember sitting in his apartment eating animal crackers. He's technically not even in that memory, but I know he was probably in the next room or something. 

So the memories I have of him are kind of fond... but from what I know about the guy, meeting him would ruin this entire image I have of him in my mind. It's silly, right? But that's how I've always felt.

And sometimes when I'm with my mom, she'll tell me how much like my father I am. How much I look like him, how much I think like him, how much I act like him. Do I really want to meet him, look into the eyes of a monster, and wonder if I'm a monster myself?

I imagine he's out there somewhere, and I sometimes wonder if he thinks about me. Maybe he's tried to find me. Maybe he doesn't care.

So if you are out there, Andrew, and if you ever come to read this, then hello. I'm Stephanie. I'm smart, and beautiful, and artistic, just like you. And when I have children, they'll never even know your name.