Today I Cried (A Fatherless Son's Lament)

Today I cried. I didn't cry because I feel like my life is a failure, although I do. It wasn't because I had just picked up my last check from the agency through which I got the job from which I was released last week and realized I don't have enough money to pay rent and my cell phone bill. My tears weren't falling because I feel like I am alone and have no real support system on this coast or because I feel like my relationship is failing because i am a failure and can't keep a job. Standing on that PATH train, my tears weren't uncontrollable because I don't know if I am going to have a place to lay my head or even due to the fact that I refuse to move back to Oklahoma and was standing there contemplating suicide. Yes, all of these things led up to the tears, but they were not the reason that today I cried. No. Today I cried because I don't have a father.

I thought about killing myself today. If I am honest, I haven't stopped thinking about killing myself. It is interesting, though, because as I mused over this course of action, relished the thought of driving a knife through my wrist and watching myself bleed to death until unconsciousness found me, I though about calling my mother and telling her I love her and not to mourn for me. I thought about calling the one I love and breaking up because I am simply not good enough and can never be loved and stood by unconditionally. As I continued to muse, my thoughts turned to a place that they haven't wandered in quite some time; I thought about calling my father.

The last time I spoke to my father was in May 2009. The last conversation we had had included a fight betwixt the two of us. (See, he has never been an active part of my life. He only stayed with my mother as long as he did because she got pregnant with me and my grandmothers forced them to live as one, so their child could have a family. He abused my mother and cheated on her often. Ultimately, he left while I was four and my sister was three.) The fight was about the fact that he hasn't done anything for me throughout the course of my life and wasn't there when I needed him. I had just moved from Oklahoma to New Jersey and hadn't found a job yet. I was asking for a help and he began discussing his other children, to whom he kept referring to as "my son" and "my daughter," as if my sister and I are NOT his children. He also told me I should move into his home in Massachusetts and get a job with his company and became irritated when I insisted that the metropolitan NYC area is where I want to be. The conversation ended with him telling me he would wire $150.00 to me on the following Thursday. He said he would call me that day to get the information. I called him on the scheduled day and got his voice mail. I told him that there was no way I could trust that he would have my back if we lived together if he couldn't even answer my telephone calls or follow through with promises.

About eight months before i moved to New Jersey, I visited New York. My father and I had just been reacquainted after five years. My cousin had recently died and my mother called him while we were at my father's brother's house after the funeral. The last time we had spoken prior to this was the day before my 23rd birthday. He told me he would pay for me to have a corneal graft, which I needed for my corneal disease. He had just closed on a house and was moving on December 27 of that year (2003), just a couple of days after our conversation. He said he would call me back after on that day. I waited five years for a phone call that never came.

Anyway, prior to my visit to NYC my father and I spoke and he told me that his children and he would come to the area to visit me while I was here. I called him and got no response. When I got back to Oklahoma and called him, his excuse was that he called one of my phones and did not receive a response. I advised him that he should have called my other number and that had he answered my call or called back, he'd have known that the other phone had been stolen and was out of commission.


I lied. The last communication I had with my father was not when I left the voicemail I previously mentioned. It was a text message. My sister called me fuming because he had just called my mother a bitch during a war of words the two had been having because she called him needing money to pay her rent and he began discussing his other children, whom she resents because he is active in their lives and was never present in ours. Anyway, my last correspondence with my father including me promising that I'd never bother him again, but asking that he would honor one final request: that he grow up and act like the father and not have petty discourse with his daughter. I briefly lectured him on the importance of his understanding her point of view. He told me that he loves my sister and some other crap. My response: if you loved her you would not have disrespected her or her mother, no matter what she had said to you you're the parent and she is the child. We haven't spoken since this time--in early fall 2009.

On the train ride home from my final time in Manhattan perhaps ever, I thought about how I wished I could be like a regular sson, with a father whom I could call and ask for assistance. I thought about calling him and telling him not to mourn my death, not to attend my funeral. I thought about calling him and telling him that he was dead to me and that my deatyh should mean nothing to him, as my life meant nothing.

Then I began to think about moving to Massachusetts for a while. I thought about taking a job with the company for which he works and staying with him until I saved enough money to come back and live here on my own terms. Then i remembered that he has no space for me. He now has custody of both of his children. Their mother first gave him her son, and then later her daughter decided to move in with her father as well, seeing how he spoiled her brother.

I thought about how they have a father, how he loves them and takes pride in them, calls them his son, his daughter. He doesn't say "one of my" sons or daughters. He refers, even in conversation with his eldest children, to them as his singular son and singular daughter. I wondered if these two golden children ever knew what it was like to miss out on simple luxuries like cable television or internet. More importantly, had they known the feeling of going through periods when they had to boil water to bathe or experienced lack of electricity or even having no water at all. I wondered if they had ever needed for anything. I had been without water, heat, electricity. My sisters and I knew how it felt to be poor. We lived it.

I wanted a father. I longed for a father who loved me and who wanted me. I wanted a father who I could call on if I needed assistance. One tear, then two, then three fell from my face. What was happening to me? I wiped my eyes and stared straight. I hadn't cried more than a tear or two in a long time and I knew this was the end. As I kept thinking, however, they continued to pour. I was on this train, standing in front of a seated passenger and I WAS CRYING.

I tried to regain my composure, wiped my face several times, hid my face in my arm, but I couldn't stop crying. I thought about missed moments, never having a strong male presence, never knowing a male to be proud of me. There was no one to whom I could ask questions or share my thoughts. I had to refocus, had to stop these tears. And I did.

I refocused. Thought about happier thoughts. Thought of my own death, my self-caused death. Knew that this time it had to work. Thought maybe I should end my relationship first, so the one I love can say I was an ex and not the current at the time of my death. Thought about contacting my mother and telling her how sorry I am to have failed her as a son and beg her not to mourn me. I pictured the scene of my death and the time. Knew it couldn't be in my room or I'd be rotting by the time my roommates knew of my death. I thought about how no one would know of my death.

Even if they figured out who to call, the people who might vaguely care about my death would probably never know. I stopped crying. Now I was in a better place. My death is one of my favorite things to think about. I don't know what I am supposed to be doing in this life and I know that my attempts to survive, to live and prosper by working in customer service have failed me miserably. I thought I should be teaching or training. I thought I should be ministering life into young people. I used to think I should be doing all of this stuff, but I am not qualified to do any of it and I have no way of becoming qualified. Maybe I shouldn't be doing any of it. Maybe I was wrong about it all. Who am I, then? I am a dead man walking. Thoughts of my death, then, were the only way to stop my tears.

So I got to Newark and as I was awaiting my New Jersey Transit train to Elizabeth, I wondered if he, my father, knew my sister was in jail. I cried again, for her. I cried because maybe she needed a father, too. (Maybe all of my sisters need fathers. I'm sure we all need or fathers.) I wondered how she would feel when she found out I was dead. I miss her. I wished I could see her one last time before I leave this place.

Then I thought maybe I should go see a doctor. Maybe I should go check myself into a mental hospital. I kept hearing my mother telling me she feels back because she taught me how to do it, which she told me after my last suicide attempt almost four years ago. I don't think I could do the pills thing again, and I don't have 26 Ambien CR to take this time anyway. I thought maybe I need anti-depressants.

Then I thought about the price tag. The cost would be too great. Who can afford a hospital stay? Who can afford EMSA if I fail at the attempt? I cannot even afford to get a prescription filled, if I could afford a doctor visit to have one made. It would be cheaper for me to die than to live anyway. Why not just end it all?

Would my father even care that he had lost his eldest seed? How would he react to the knowledge that he had outlived me? Dammit! More tears began to stream down my face. I didn't realize this was such a big issue for me. I've managed without a father. Yes, I knew part of the reason I want to be a father so badly is because I was never allowed the opportunity to be fathered and I want to experience the joy of fatherhood for myself. I knew that I had searched for a father in my uncle, in men I thought might be life-long mentors. Until today, however, I didn't know the extent of my emotional response to my fatherlessness. I wished for, longed for, yearned for a father. I just wanted someone to support me in my life, a role model, a friend, a ray of hope in my crisis. I needed a father. So today, I cried.