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It makes me think of what my life would be like if my parents were still together. Would I be different? Would I be more closed-minded? Would I be less reckless? Even, would I be straight? A boy’s relationship with his father is most often thought of as an extremely important thing. In psychology, some even believe the relationship with your father shapes the person you are when you’re older. Psychologist Oliver James writes that the relationship with your father in the first three years of your life decides whether you are gay or straight in his book ‘They fuck you up’, a not-so-subtle reference to the infamous Larkin Poem, ‘This Be The Verse’. I’m not sure if I believe his theory or not, but in resent for my estranged father I used to think this was what had happened to me.
My father enlisted in the Army around the time I was born, and when he returned during my toddler years, my mother filed for divorce. Honestly, it is very hard to remember much so it is not totally as tragic as it sounds, but the effect it had on the remainder of my youth up until now was definitely not beneficial. Moments that spring to mind are teaching myself to shave in year eight (although the irony was I really didn’t get any significant stubble till last year) and then shaving off half an eyebrow after convincing myself I had a mono-brow. Also, being teased for having been literally the only boy who didn’t know what the offside rule was not pleasant.
In my teenage years of angst and confusion I was a horrifically, dare I say it, ‘emo’ child. I listened to awful music and drank cheap cider and vodka cocktails at the park on a Saturday afternoon with my similarly challenged peers, with no real aims par idiotic escapism. Having only one parent around, I could get away with things people with two could only dream of. My mother juggled a full time job and my other siblings, leaving me plenty of time to rebel.
It wasn’t until one summer holiday during these years when my father came to visit I finally had both my parents together for the first time in my short living memory. It was only for the meagre amount of four days but those four days were hard work. I had both of them against me simultaneously, leaving me unable to fight back to any rules they set in place. I had always been so resentful for their divorce, but at that point I realised how different life would have been if they had stayed together.
In all honesty, I would love to go home at weekends, like my flatmates do, to my own parents. In my imaginary world dad would take me to a rugby match and then we would come home to my mum and siblings to watch Saturday night television together. University is constantly hectic, yet the breathing space away from the drama of my home-life has made me think about my father more than ever, and the life I never had.
Every so often I get an excessively anguished from my daydreaming. It is at this point I crank out a bit of classic Sylvia Plath, and in the same vein produce my own lobotomised version of ‘Daddy’, the notorious poem where she professes her hatred for her dead father. It is peculiar though when I spend a second to think; my father is definitely not dead, but it is like he ceases to exist. I don’t know his telephone number, or even the city he lives in. Sometimes I think about this and laugh, but it is kind of sad.
What comforts me is that regardless of my back-story being a little different to the majority, I’ve still ended up at the same place, and at the end of the day I know that I am no less of a person than anybody else. In fact, I’m equal.
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