My mother, one of  three children and my father, the only boy of four children had me very early in life. My mother was a beautiful nineteen-year-old young women and my father was a hot little twenty-six year old stud when I came along. Mom was known for her free spirit and mouth and dad was known for his “jack of all trade” abilities, the hot rods he drove and his love for running the roads.

I am the oldest of 3 boys, each so different you can’t even imagine. Looking in the mirror I see my father, but let me speak or react and my mother takes over. My middle brother is the exact opposite. He looks just like my mother, but he is the walking, talking image of “Tom Cat”, a common nick name for my father. The baby boy barely looks like them at all and his personality is identical to the man who raised him. So as you can see we of course share some of the same character traits we see in our progenitors but differ in many more ways.

Growing up I vividly remember my parents and their unhappiness. I was seven, the next five and the youngest of us 3 had just arrived, barely two weeks old when he left. I was not sad nor mad, if anything I worried for my brothers because they didn’t understand. They had not been around to see their discontent with one another. Sometimes people may make beautiful children together but not belong together. I won’t go into the intimate details about the good and the bad, but this was best for everyone involved in my opinion.

My mother later remarried and over time both my middle brother and I moved to our fathers, which to be honest surprised everyone on my part. Of course I wasn’t their long before moving to my aunt’s house. My father and I have never really seen eye to eye. I have many theories, but I think it had most to do with the fact that I was so much like my mother. Of course being gay definitely did not help. I was his first-born son that very early on made it clear that I would not follow in his foot steps, rather I was walking around in mom’s heels.  Even when I tried to show interest I was usually made to feel as if I didn’t belong “out here with the boys”. We fought about everything as I grew up and nothing seemed to make it better.

I decided to join the ARMY my junior year in high school to pay for college and secretly hoped to please my father by doing such a manly thing. I scored quite high on the ASVAB and was offered a job in Military Intelligence, but decided to pursue Diesel Mechanics, a passion of my fathers. Guess what, it worked too. My father and I got along better in the year before I left and the two years I was in the ARMY than ever before. But that day came. The day I came out and then the day I was discovered to be gay by the ARMY. After coming out to my family and being discharged from the military, my father and I didn’t speak for a little more than a year.

Over time and with a little work, my dad started to come around. I think his major break though was when I was almost killed in an accident. I felt a connection with my father after this event that I had never felt before. This connection was short-lived. Once my father started to see me with someone, he began to revert back to his old ways. He would make fun of us or have smart ass comments at family events. He liked to say things to us about how we should be with women and not each other. Over time, this really worn on me and my relationship with my pattern. The time came and out of respect for myself and my relationship, I brought it all to the table with my father. I made it clear to him that my life and my relationship with my partner was no different from his with his wife or the relationship my brothers had with their girlfriends. He did not feel as I did and made it clear he did not and would not respect what he saw as a choice for me.

As of Thursday, it’s been 3 years. Another fathers day has passed, he just celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday, and now thanksgiving has just passed again and we haven’t spoken. I didn’t call. He didn’t call. He never calls. He never called. I always called. I’ve stopped calling. I no longer feel the need to call. Why should I call? I reached a point in my life where I stop making myself feel bad. I realized I had started my own family and I needed to focus on that family. For more than 20 years I tried everything and it got me nowhere. It was tired of being the only one that appeared to care. That doesn’t stop me from thinking of him all the time. I often wonder will he ever come around, will he, before it’s too late, make that step? Will I get to a point where I decide to start trying again? It’s so tough sometimes, but mostly around the holidays. I ask myself if I’m making the right decisions by moving past it. I don’t know if I am. Something keeps me in this place with my decision but what do I do with it?