Root Cause- The Unwanted Child

I was young the first time my mother told me my father never wanted me. I don’t remember why she said it; all I know is she was mad. I’m not sure who she was mad at; my father, my sister, or I always made her angry. My mother’s anger took up a lot of space in my mind and in my life. Some days, I think it still does.

I don’t remember what age I was either; there are lots of holes in my young memory. I didn’t really log date and time as a child; those things never really mattered to me. Truthfully, they still mean really little to me now, in adulthood.

What I did log was the impact of the emotion. The way her words tore through my little heart, with what I didn’t have the mental capacity to know was shock, was unbearable. Then I remember the mental war I went through as I tried to use my too-little mind to process such big news with such little information. All I know is the little girl in me used to adore her father, but that news muddied the waters.

From that day forward, I looked at him differently. I don’t think he realized it until I was much older, and by then our relationship was damaged. I started asking my father all kinds of questions, which of course he never answered. Ever. What Jamaican man do you know that allows himself to be questioned by a child? There began my conditioning of hating silence. I, they would come to realize, was not the child you could ever silence.

If you didn’t answer me, I would find the truth, my own way. There began my search for the truth and the birth of my hypervigilant tendencies. Imagine being a hypervigilant child. Not much missed me. I searched everything, trying to find all the hidden truths life had to offer. I’m still trying to determine if that was the making of a walking, talking disaster or the making of a deep empath. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

It was one of these searches that I came across photos of a young boy, who matched my father’s skin color, had my Asian eyes, and shared my father’s middle name. I remember bringing the photo to my mother, asking her, "Who's this?” She told me it was my brother… more shock. How did I have a secret brother? I had never met him, and clearly he wasn’t a baby. In the picture he was a little boy, posing with a soccer ball. Apparently, he was older than me. How could that be?

Then came the story that changed my life. My brother was the product of my father’s infidelity during my parents' engagement. The irony of that would not find me until I was much older. The sins of the parents and all. My mother said he was a secret until the truth was exposed when I was 4 months old, by my brother's mother. To my mom, all my father’s change of behavior and indifference to her pregnancy all started making sense in that moment.

He already had a child in another country with someone else, whom he apparently promised to marry, yet somehow ended up here instead, married to my mother. She was convinced he didn’t really love her, just used her to come to another country. Neglecting to think the whole plan through enough to figure out how he was going to get out of his marriage. So he stayed but took out his grief for leaving his son on my mother and then resented having me. Then to top it off, I was a girl. What man ever wants to have a daughter?

I was just the consequence of unprotected sex. Lust and desire are a quick release, not love. That crushing feeling would stick with me for a very long time. Through years of trying to earn my father’s love, but never quite feeling good enough to actually obtain it. This intrusive thought would manifest in relationships with emotionally unavailable men, who would break my heart, reinforcing this toxic belief. I would traumatize myself for years, chasing love that didn’t want to be caught, trying to outrun the feeling of being unwanted. I would search for validation and acceptance in others, measuring my worth by what others thought of me. Completely consumed in superficial acceptance, oblivious to the fact that my worth actually started internally.