by L. A. Brown

Created on: June 21, 2009

Every year, at Father's Day I think back to the two men that raised me. My biological father until I was 15 and my step father who married my mother when I was 18. I wonder what kind of a person I would have became if only the latter one had been in my life.

When I was very small, I had been a daddy's girl. To me, he could do no wrong. As my older sister became a teenager she would complain about him and I would defend him to the death. It frustrated her that I thought she was just being difficult.

As I became a young teenager, the rose coloured glasses seemed to slowly come off. His constant need to drink seemed more of a problem than it was funny. The way he spoke to my mother and my sister and I was belligerent. Never did we seem to do anything right. The tension in the house was constant and when my mother announced to us that they were divorcing, I felt an odd sense of relief.

Even still, I didn't want to believe that he was a bad person. I met for lunch with him and he offered to take my cousin and I to Canada's wonderland for my 15th birthday. It was a pretty good day. He bought us pretty well anything we wanted. At one time I saw him hovering over a jewelery display and selected a particularly expensive bracelet. I knew that he wasn't planning on giving it to my mother and at that moment I knew that the rumours I had been hearing for the past year were true. My father was having an affair.

That alone, I think I could have eventually forgiven him for. But when I returned I saw my mother in a panic trying to find $500 she had borrowed from my grandparents to pay the utility bill. I immediately thought to the endless bills my father had pulled from his wallet that day and knew in gut that he had taken it. I felt terrible for my mother and incredibly angry at my dad.

It's a terrible thing at that fragile age, especially for a daughter, to lose faith in your father. I became a rebellious teenager who sought "bad" attention from boys and began hanging around with those who preferred spending their days drinking than being with family or studying. My first steady relationship was a 2 year nightmare of abuse, lying and cheating. It wasn't until I reached adult hood that I made the connection between that first relationship and how I had perceived my parent's marriage.

When my mother first brought her boyfriend to meet us, I didn't think much of it. She had been dating regularly since the divorce and I was very happy for her. The year of freedom for her, rejuvenated

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