> Greentext

Yeah, I mean really my dad’s biggest problem as a parent was that when I got to be like 13 he kinda stopped showing up. Like, I always had food in the house, and clothes and stuff. I had all the necessities. But, it started with a couple of days a week he’d be gone. Then a week at a time. It wasn’t long before he was gone a month or 2 at at a time, and when he’d come home he’d stay a few days to a week or two and gone again.

If I really needed him. Like, if there was a crazy emergency I generally could track him down. But that involved calling his girlfriends houses, and the problem there was when I called a house if he wasn’t there they’d wonder where he was.

For everything else though. There was food in the fridge and money in the Madonna statue on the mantle.

But also my parents had me late in life. When I was 13 my dad was getting close to 60 and had been single since my mom died 8 years previous. Most women he dated had grown children. It was a tough spot for him and me. Since I was basically an only child.

So it could have been worse. I had essentially my own 3 bedroom house at the of 13. Definitely led to a lot of partying and drug use. But also it would have been nice to come home to someone everyday, and that lack of discipline definitely hurt my situation as an adult.

But my dad always made sure to tell me that he loved me when we did see each other. He never hit or spanked me. He wasn’t an alcoholic or drug addict.

I guess that what I’m saying is. My childhood wasn’t a conventional one. But, it wasn’t really a bad one. It was really just 2 people doing the best they could with the situation that had presented itself.