Growing up poor, in my opinion ages a person. Couple that with an alcoholic, drug addict, permiscuous mother and being an only child; I feel a lot of childhood that should be fondly remembered, I try hard to forget.
Through all the sleepless nights of alcoholic parent obscenities, and days of silent shame from realization of her deeds the night before. Coupled with the unfathomable anxiety of school. From bullying, truant officers, uppity teachers that would never understand a typical day of life in my shoes. I never really felt like an adult, just a lonely kid.
It didn’t help puberty didn’t start till after I was 17. I looked to be around 12 years old in 10th grade. I was built for bullies.
That being said, even as my first beautiful pubes began to blossom (it was like a religious experience for me when I first took notice of them). And I finally had the most awkward, embarrassing sex probably ever performed on the planet. I still didn’t feel like a man.
Age is really insignificant in my opinion, as far as being a man goes. Take nature for instance. Most sharks have to become fierce predators from birth, and avoid being eaten by their mothers. Granted, sharks and humans in comparison, is really kind of stupid. But, I digress.
I quit school, started my first full time job, moved out on my own, got my G.E.D., graduated college, got married, bought my first home. Still, I felt like I was ridiculously small and adolescent compared to others of basically my same class and achievements. Something about them always seemed so much greater and advanced.
Around this 20-30 era I shared in my mothers love for alcohol and drugs. I thought maybe that’s why I never felt like a “man”. But then, my first daughter was born.
That was the first time I believe, I ever felt true, hard core, painfully pure love. Also, it was love at first sight. Something I never truly believed in.
I knew in the first moment I laid my eyes on that child I’d gladly lay my life down for that baby in a moment’s notice. I also knew that people in hell would weep for the poor soul that dared cause her harm. I would be willing to take a life for that baby.
That was when I knew I was a man. Real love required me to be that. And I knew all the bullshit I went through was yesterday, none of it mattered. She was why I was here and my destiny was her.
And now, I have two more I feel just the same way for. True love makes a man, it can make them great, it can make them horrifying, it can make them humble. It can paint a thousand different types, but the clay that was a child is thrown away and replaced with the granite sculpture of a man.
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