For most of my adult life, I dreaded the day I woke up and saw my mother in the mirror. It never happened. But, I had grown into my father. I shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone always said I was the son he never had.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I barely saw my mother, and the mom I saw was often angry and unhappy. The mother I grew up with is not the mother I know now. It's not the mother she became after my father died, and that's been the greatest prize of my life.
When I was 12 and met my real father for the first time, I was terrified I would lose the one I already had.
When I was little, I knew that I was not adopted, but I actually imagined and hoped that I was - and that my real parents were going to come get me.
I didn't wake up one day and think, 'I'm not going to have children.' My mother was a housewife and brought up three children, so I just thought it would happen.
Before I had a son, I used to look at my father's example: he left me, he left my mother. When I had a son, I got caught in the same situation that his mother don't want me to see him. I started looking at my father in a different light.
When I stopped seeing my mother through the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.
It's not a born-again thing; it was a peaceful, really, really cool moment where I just felt that I was no longer the dad anymore. I actually had become a son, and it makes things much easier from a day-to-day perspective.
I think my father was somewhat disappointed in not having had a son, and in that way I was the nearest thing he had.
It was a sad process for me to become a mom, and a long process. I felt so embarrassed that I couldn't have a biological child.
And in that time, I lost my dad and had kids of my own. It was like, OK, I get it now. I know what fatherhood is all about. And you look at your parents differently.