I never knew my father.

All my life, I never knew who my father. I don't know if he left the responsibility of a young family or my mother kicked him out. The only thing I do remember about him was he spent a lot of time in and out of jail. When he was home, he was a sleep on the couch never wanting to be bothered. I looked up his jail record once and it consisted of domestic violence, drunk driving and being behind on child support payments. There are no positive memories of a father's love, just an empty gap with a lack of trust. The times I wanted to celebrate my culture on my mother side, it was a problem in her eyes. ''You should be proud of your Irish culture and heritage.'' She would say. How could I celebrate a heritage of a complete stranger? It's not that I was ever ashamed of being half white and I have never denied it. The problem was I have never had the 'white experience.' In my early childhood, I found no Irish influence or any father figure for that matter. For the first few years of life it was just my grandmother, aunts and my mother. There was no real male figure in my life and my mother was forced to work two jobs to survive. This was my world, I lived in poverty and my mother and I made the best of a rough situation. There were many issues though, I could sense my mother didn't want to be a mom. She had me at seventeen and had to become an adult without the help of a man. In the eyes of a child, I couldn't imagine the difficulties a single mother must face. A teenage mother's mind set isn't always focused on the child, but I believe she tried with all the influences in her life. As a biracial girl with no connection with her father, my mother and I fought over race a lot. It is hard to expose the type of fights that we use to have in the household, but its all part of my experience. I remember coming home from school one day after reading Anne Frank in sixth grade and we had to write a report about our heritage. I was coming to an age where I was changing and growing from a child to a young woman. When I was a preteen it was the most awkward time in my life. My mother had just given me a bob hair cut and didn't keep product in the house, because she had thin straight hair like her Tanio grandmother. She didn't know how to maintain my curly hair, so this meant I had to endure wild hair needing to be tamed. My mother ripped up my report that talked about my Latin Caribbean background and didn't approve. She went into the refrigerator, pour a glass of milk and dabbed a dot of chocolate on her finger. My mother wiped that dot of chocolate in half, put her finger in the milk and stirred it. The glass of milk barely changed colors. '' This glass of milk is you and you are white, you should accepted it and life would be easier.'' she said. My mother wrote my new paper about my father's Irish Heritage and the teacher gave me a half a grade for not including my mother's side. In order to bring the grade up on this paper, I had to write my mother's heritage in secret. '' The whole point of this assignment was to understand each other's differences and accept each other." my teacher said. I would get one message at school and a completely different one at home. This was the same year I was told by my piers what the one percent rule was and at the same time I was being called white. My emotions were everywhere,I felt alone and l lost though out my teenage years. When my mother married my third step dad, I hated him, because it felt like my mother had changed. She went from a struggling single mother to a woman that had a little money. My step father was a bridge designer and made a great deal of money. He and I didn't get along, it felt almost as if I was in the way of their perfect family. '' Your not going to ruin my marriage." my mother use to say. As time went on my step dad, his daughter and my mother started leaving me out of every family photo, family outing and Holiday events. I pretty much was alone with my thoughts. ''Why wasn't I worthy of love?'' I thought. These types of questions would form in my mind and when my mother kicked me out five days after graduation, my heart had formed abandonment issues. My father tried to get in contact with me in my early 20's, but it was very uncomfortable to even think about. This man was a complete stranger to me with a long jail record. I wasn't trying to judge the man, but how after all these years could I just meet this man? Five years would pass by before I would have a phone call with him and this was only after my ex girlfriend's father died. ''I wish I would have had more time. Don't be like me.'' she said. This phone call was not only weird, but I could barely understand him. My father had suffered from throat cancer and I didn't know how to processes these disturbing feelings. I wouldn't meet him in person for two more years and when I finally did agree to lunch; he wanted to give me plates that had been in his family for centuries. '' You are shaped exactly like your mother was.'' he said. If this was his way of starting a conversation and make things more comfortable, it made things worse. Looking into this frail man's face, it didn't feel like was in the presences of my father. I could tell in his eyes he meant well and wanted to know me, but the truth is he never will know me.When the only faces I knew going up were all women it just couldn't be. I do feel awful for my decision, but I felt to old to use words like father. I have only text him on Facebook or my cell phone and he continues to say things that make me feel uncomfortable. As a woman that doesn't know this stranger, I had to unfriend him recently on my Facebook page, because he kept sharing phones or make comments I wouldn't say to a daughter. I do try to let him have some contact with me, but I choose to keep him far away. The only confusing thought I'm still trying to process is why my mother wanted me to celebrate an Irish culture when my father's family is from a small town in Britain.