Part 2: The Ghost Dad (Maria’s Perspective)
My entire world has always been me and my mom. Once I was born, her life got brutally hard, but also strangely simple. I needed her. So she stepped up and did what had to be done.
She worked herself to the bone. She clipped coupons, learned how to fix leaky sinks with YouTube tutorials, stretched our grocery budget on dollar meals, fought with health insurance companies on the phone, and made sure to only cry after she thought I was fast asleep.
The divorce was quick. The child support order the judge handed down was basically just a piece of paper my "dad" used as trash. Mom took him back to court once, but you really can't squeeze a dime out of a guy who is dead-set on disappearing, and you sure as hell can't force him to be a father.
I have never met him. Not once.
When I was little, I asked the usual questions. Kids always do. "Where's my dad?" "He's not here, sweetie." Later on, when I was old enough to hear the pain hiding inside her answers, I asked the hard one: "Did he leave because of me?"
She never gave me the gritty details when I was young. But that question almost broke her. I remember she sat on the edge of my bed, looked me right in the eye, and said, "No. He left because something was profoundly broken inside of him, not in you."
She told me he made a selfish choice to tap out of our lives. She taught me that adults can be incredibly flawed, and sometimes kids end up carrying the baggage they didn't pack. Most importantly, she drilled it into my head that his absence had absolutely zero to do with my worth.
I’m 16 now. And I notice everything. People tell my mom I'm sharper than most adults. I'm calm, I watch people, I like to think I'm funny, and I am fiercely protective of the woman who raised me. When I was 13 and she tried to skip dinner because her bank account was overdrawn, I slid my plate toward her and said, "Mom, you know a cup of Lipton tea isn't a meal, right? Eat."
