My Failures As A Father: Chapter 2

LOSER

“Daddy, why does mommy call you a loser?”

Krystasia was only six or seven years old when she asked me that. I was picking her up from my mom’s house and we were both standing at the front door while she put on her shoes. Her question caught me so off guard that it felt like I had the wind knocked out of me. I couldn’t catch my breath fast enough to come up with an answer, much less a good one.   

“I don’t know why your mom said that,” I finally mumbled out. 

“She says it all the time,” Krystasia replied. “Does that mean you’re really a loser?”

I was about a year removed from graduating university and living in a one-bedroom apartment with my girlfriend. To say I was making ends meet would be an overstatement. Some of the jobs I held up to that point included cleaning cars for a rental company and making $8.75/hour. When that job ended, I worked at a basketball facility called the Hoopdome and also sold lottery tickets at a bingo hall. I made 20 or 30 dollars in tips a night from bingo, half of which usually went to the weed man who was outside the hall every evening. 

That meant I was barely making enough money to keep up with my portion of the rent and certainly didn’t have anything left over to do much for my daughter apart from keeping her clothed and fed. I was writing but wasn’t committed yet. Not the way I am now. I didn’t know how to be.

Krystasia’s “loser” question made me think that maybe my mother had been right all those years ago when she told me I wasn’t ready to be a father. I thought of all the times she told me I was throwing my life away. How she called me a child. Called me impulsive. None of it worked, but it was front and centre in my mind as I tried to make sense of how my daughter perceived me.

The breaking point came that summer on Krystasia’s birthday. I’d managed to save up enough money to buy her a new bike. It felt like such an accomplishment to spend over $100 on something other than a bill. And even though the bike was simple, a bit small and nothing to show off, I was proud.

My friend John was with me when I drove the bike over to Kathy’s apartment to give Krystasia her gift. 

“She’s gonna freak,” I told John as the elevator door opened on Kathy’s floor. Krystasia came to the door and immediately jumped on the bike. She rode up and down the hallway a few times before jumping off and giving me a hug. When she went back inside, I pushed the elevator button and waited to head back down. When I saw Krystasia’s door open again, I thought she was coming back out to give me another hug. But it wasn’t Krystasia that came back out. It was her mother. She rolled the bike back into the hallway. 

“What is this,” she asked. “Take this shit back from wherever you got it and get her a real bike.” 

She slammed the door and left the bike standing there. 

The elevator doors opened and I lifted the bike inside. I tried not to look at John. We didn’t say anything on the ride down or for the first few minutes while we were in the car.

Loser.

Soon after, I decided to move back in with my mom. I had no job at the time. A freelance gig here and there would put a few dollars in my pocket, but that money barely sustained me much less provided anything for Krystasia. After about a month back at my mom’s, I was already dead broke and had to apply for Government Assistance just to get by. That broke me in a different way.

Loser.

There I was, a university graduate with all this potential but couldn’t even find a way to sustain myself. So many days I sat in my room and let the tears stream down my face. Or I would lock myself in the bathroom and pray for something, for anything to change my life. I can still feel how tightly my hands were clutched. My eyes were closed and rushes of fear and anxiety and desperation filled my heart. Then I’d wipe my face and walk out of the bathroom smiling and joking about what a nasty shit I just took.

This was how I survived. 

Not even Krystasia could save me back then. I didn’t even want to see her. No, I’m saying that wrong. I didn’t want her to see me. Not like that. Not without having anything to offer. I didn’t understand yet. Not back then. I didn’t know the value of Krystasia and I making snow angels in the front yard. I couldn’t grasp the impact of our pillow fights or the joy of us watching cooking shows together then trying to replicate her favourite recipes. 

I only sunk deeper when my mother had to give me money to buy Krystasia’s Christmas gift. Deeper still when the ice-cream truck came around and my mom would put the change in my room so I didn’t have to ask. I can’t even write these words without that same shame intruding on my emotions. Where I am now has made it possible for me to smile through the hindsight, but back then, every part of me was suffering.

So if I had to be a shoe salesman, so be it. But when my mom walked into the store with Krystasia as I was arranging shoes on the aisles, I could feel the rage rising from the tip of my toes till steam blew out the crown of my head. I kept a straight face when Krystasia wanted to try on all the shoes. My teeth were clenched when my mom asked me to show her where the socks were. As soon as she and Krystasia left, I wanted to run out of the store and keep running and running till I found a reality I could be proud of. I wanted to skip the struggle and the sacrifice and the being too broke to buy ice-cream for my daughter and get to the part where I was actually making a living doing something I loved. 

When my shift was over and I got back home, I was yelling at my mom from the bottom of the staircase before I even took my shoes off. 

“Why would you do that? Why would you bring her to my workplace?” My poor mother looked genuinely confused. She was standing in the kitchen doing the dishes or maybe putting away the dishes when she turned around to hear what I was barking about. 

“I don’t want you guys coming back there,” I said. “If you want to buy socks or something, go somewhere else.”

My mom didn’t say anything. She let me scold her and then watched me stomp off to my room like I was back in high school. I didn’t get over it. Not for months. But even back then I recognized that my raging at my mom was my way of screaming into a mirror. I knew I was chasing my dreams of being a writer, but chasing implied that I wasn’t there yet. And the realities of the present moment kept slapping me in the face.

Loser.

My duty as a father was to provide for my daughter and I was failing. 

Loser. 

Every day I spent at my mom’s house, every morning I woke up in the same bed I did when I was still a teenager made me relive the voices who had asked me, “Why are you keeping this baby?” Or told me, 

“You’re too young.” 

“You have your entire life ahead of you.” 

“You don’t have to do this.” 

Those voices poured into my mind like a faucet I couldn’t turn off. They filled my brain till there was no choice but to spill into anger that my mother and daughter had to endure.

Do you know what it feels like to look at your child and feel resentment? To be so filled with frustration and guilt and shame that you start blaming the very person you’re living your life for? It’s unimaginable now that I even had any of these thoughts, but I did. And for a while, I’d push away. I stayed in my room for longer and longer stretches studying grammar and sentence structure in books I borrowed from the library. The drapes on my window stayed closed and a small lamp I bought from the dollar store was the only light allowed in my room.

There were no more pillow fights or carrying Krystasia on my back to put her to bed. I was always busy when she came knocking on my door asking to try a new recipe she saw on the Cooking Network or to follow her to the park. When she pleaded I sent her to her grandmother. I couldn’t take seeing her face. 

My mom being my mom sensed something was wrong. She would push open my bedroom door and say, “Your daughter wants to go to the park.” She made sure we all ate dinner together and wouldn’t let me sit in my room. One time I wrote a letter to myself about how frustrated I was. I don’t remember exactly what that letter said, but I knew I said some pretty harsh stuff. Like I hated having to be a parent all the time and I wish I could do it all over. The pressure I put on myself to be a provider confronted with my dreams of making a living as a writer and that conflict was breaking me. 

I put the letter under my bed and would look at it from time to time. Then one day it was gone. I checked everywhere even though I knew I only kept it in that one specific spot. And to be honest, as soon as I couldn’t find it, I knew where it was. I knew my mom read it and probably ripped it up. We’ve never spoken about it, but I know my mother. That letter was trashed as soon as she read what was inside.

So many afternoons I’d sit on my mom’s front porch and watch Krystasia doing cartwheels on the lawn. I still remember when she mastered doing backflips and handstands. She was just as excited when she found a new critter that she discovered somewhere in the grass and neatly placed it in a jar. Those moments were like purgatory. My heart in human form twirling in front of me while my passion for writing was starting to feel like an obstacle to my parenting. 

As supportive as my mother was of me trying to build my writing career, she understood what it took to raise children. We were getting into 2011 now and before the year started, my mother made me apply for teacher’s college. Getting into teacher’s college took some effort, but once you’ve been accepted, it’s like a handshake agreement that you’ll at least be comfortable for your working career. Teachers in Toronto make up to 90k a year. And while those weren’t starting wages, the stability of going into class every day and collecting a paycheck every two weeks started to look appealing. 

Krystasia would be turning ten. I wasn’t working at the shoe store anymore. I’d found other odd jobs, and if I remember correctly, 2011 was when I started working as a custodian for two or three different apartment buildings. Then the news came in June. The look on my mom’s face when I told her I’d been accepted was an uneven mix of relief and excitement. In a year her son would be standing in front of a room of students looking to him for guidance. 

I spent an hour in the bathroom that evening. 

Then September came and with it the first morning of teacher’s college. I lingered in my room thinking of what this meant. This was a commitment to my future, one different than I had envisioned in countless daydreams. I wouldn’t be sitting inside my cabin by the lake typing my new bestseller. There would be no book-tours across North America and no studio was asking to turn my novel into a movie. I was going to be a high school teacher, but it still felt like failure.

The clock was ticking and I still hadn’t made a move out of my bedroom. Was I really going to do this? Is being a teacher what I want to do with the rest of my life? Staring at the ceiling, I made a decision.

END

---

Thank you for reading part 2 of My Failures As A Father. Part 3 will be out next Sunday. If you’re enjoying the series so far, please share, comment and like. If you haven’t read part 1, here is the link.

If you want to keep up with all parts of this short story series, please subscribe to my Love and Literature newsletter.