My Father's Closet
Written by ginaAt only 11, Billy's perfect picture life unraveled and he finally thought that perhaps he would discover why his father left. “Is it another woman?” he asked, in a peculiar way the mother responded "no" laughingly I uttered “another man?” and there was silence and still after 10years, that silence still rings in my ears.
A silence that changed my life forever, broken only to a few friends and relatives for fear of what people might think. “After my parents separation”, he says “I started spending the weekends with my father at the city, he shared a condo with a young man just the same age as my mother.
To them, everything was normal but to me I felt anything but normal. Those weekends were nightmares for me. Not only was I forced to leave my mother and friends but was initiated to a culture I knew nothing about. We had gone from the Garden of Eden to Sodom and Gomorrah.
It would not sink in me that at the end of the day my father walked into the bedroom with a man I had met only weeks before and not my mother the way he used to. I was forced to endure this for a few months before my mother and I moved miles away from my father. Though it had made things easier for me and my mother and was no longer forced to face the truth and reality about my father's sexuality, I did not know why I felt so empty inside.
As difficult as it was to trust or love my father, I have always hoped and prayed for a closer relationship with him.
To them, everything was normal but to me I felt anything but normal. Those weekends were nightmares for me. Not only was I forced to leave my mother and friends but was initiated to a culture I knew nothing about. We had gone from the Garden of Eden to Sodom and Gomorrah.
It would not sink in me that at the end of the day my father walked into the bedroom with a man I had met only weeks before and not my mother the way he used to. I was forced to endure this for a few months before my mother and I moved miles away from my father. Though it had made things easier for me and my mother and was no longer forced to face the truth and reality about my father's sexuality, I did not know why I felt so empty inside.
As difficult as it was to trust or love my father, I have always hoped and prayed for a closer relationship with him.
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