No. 006: To My Father
Magritte's The Empire of Light (1954)
"I felt like the life I'd been living had a room in it I'd never been allowed to walk into."
I was 29 when I found out you were my biological father and I can't pretend I took it well at first.
My entire world and sense of self had been flipped upside down. Everything I thought I knew about myself went blurry for a while. I felt lied to. I felt like the life I'd been living had a room in it I'd never been allowed to walk into and I stood at the edge of that truth for a long time before I could step into it.
I think the thing that felt most strange was that we actually were not strangers to each other. I had grown up my entire life with you in it. I still remember the first memory of you. I came into work with my mom that day and saw you drawing at your desk. I vividly remember the feeling when I saw how effortlessly you made drawing look. The way your pen would whip across the page with such control but also with such freedom.
From that moment on, every time I saw you all I wanted to do was sit next to you and draw. In my eyes we had formed a bond over our love for art. While I'll never truly know how you felt during those times, I do know you always made me feel important and valued. Any time I was around you made time to draw with me.
I remember most of my childhood filled with days where our families would gather together. While your children were a lot older than me, I still remember feeling so excited to be around them. You all felt like family.
It's been about 18 years since I last saw you in person. Between then and now I have watched you and your family grow. Your children have grown and now have children of their own. Including me.
There are times I catch myself watching my own children draw and I can't help but think of you. Your love for art and creating is a trait that has been passed on to the next generation. It's the thread that keeps us all tied together.
Sometimes I think about what it would be like to tell you all of this. What you would say. How you would feel. Whether your family would welcome it or whether I'd become the person who brought chaos into a life that didn't ask for it.
However, those thoughts are usually fleeting. I've convinced myself it's not worth disrupting your life. Telling you wouldn't change anything for the better and would only cause hurt that doesn't need to exist. So I won't. I will continue to carry this quietly, and I'm okay with that.
— Your unknown child
Submitted by: Anonymous