I grew up with my father as the only parent and it wasn’t always easy

Single parent families have become something quite ordinary, at least in a big city like Paris where everything goes very fast, even couples.

The story I’m about to tell is completely ordinary, except that it affects only a minority percentage of single-parent families. Why I grew up from the age of 7 with my only parent: my father.

The story of the girl who no longer had a mother

Let’s start from the beginning, it’s always better.

When I was in the third grade, my mother’s father died and she went to Africa to attend his funeral.

The trip was very expensive, so I was expected to go with my brother, then 4 or 5 months old, for a few weeks. But she didn’t come back.

Era the first difficult moment of my life, closely followed by the realization that she wasn’t coming back. I don’t know how long it took.

One day, I told myself I knew she wasn’t coming back.

I only remember one from that time feeling of emptiness and silence hardly disturbed by the noise of the television or radio.

After a legal battle and a fight with my mother and grandmother, my father went to Africa to look for my one year old brother.

It was imperative to him that my brother and I were reunited and that we did French nationality. As an immigrant, he wanted to avoid us going through the same hardships as he did.

my father doesn’t neither particularly chatty nor warm and I often played alone surrounded by my many toys in the room I usually shared with my mother.

The weekend was my favorite time as we often visited my extended family. I then had people to argue with and the ambient animation made me forget thethe darkness in which I lived.

Being an only child, I lived in my own universe between books, music and my dolls and solitude was an old friend.

In this loneliness was mixed with widespread sadness like a dull and constant noise.

Most of the time I didn’t think about it, but it got more complicated when I met unfamiliar children. Intrigued, they asked me this question that opened my bowels:

“But how come you don’t have a mother?” »

My father also dealt with this absence, the failure of his marriage and the responsibility that fell to him to raise us aloneI and my brother.

My father and I: daily organization

Materially, I lacked for nothing : I ate my fill, I had a roof, I received Christmas and birthday presents, I had school supplies.

But the circumstances were sometimes complicated because my father was what the state calls “single parent”i.e. a parent who raises the children alone, without the economic participation of the second parent.

The fact that he was alone required some organizational gymnastics as well as sacrifices because he could hardly pick us up at 4.30pm.

From CE2, I started to go to school alone then coming home alone after studying at 6pm It was a source of stress for my father but he had no choice: he had to pick up my brother from kindergarten at 6pm.

To relocate, my school was near the Louvre in Paris and my brother’s nursery in the Paris suburbs where we lived. Which means I took the subway by myself for 40 minutes, morning and night.

We also stood in line at welfare to receive food aid packages. My father lived it rather badly, hurt in her pride but we needed it.

When the owner of our apartment wanted to get it back, it was very complicated. We lived with the family for a few months and then in a hotel for most of my sixth year.

We were constantly tired from long subway rides. When I started classes at 8:00, I got up at 6:00 Luckily, in 6th grade, we never finished classes after 4:00….

The hotel being extremely expensive, we finally landed in a social house. We were lucky that she was in a beautiful part of the capital (yes there is) and well maintained.

The social workers at this facility helped us find an apartment, which we moved into at the end of my 5th year.

Furthermore, my brother was partly under my responsibility. When I started school late or finished early, I had to drive him or pick him up from school.

And sometimes I was notified at the last minute, for example the morning itself!

I love my brother, but sometimes I missed some experiences due to the lack of a protection system. And this problem that was supposed to be just our parents’ has become mine too.

The pitfalls of adolescence

If I refer to the Anglo-Saxon definition of teenagerI’d say my adolescence started at 13, but my body took a step forward and I had my first period just before my 11th birthday.

I was at a friend’s house and her mother told me very succinctly: ” you are a woman now “. I was more lost than ever.

My father came to pick me up, my girlfriend’s mother explained the situation to him and I understood right away which was extremely uncomfortable.

Then until I was 16 I played a stupid game with my father every month. I asked him for 3 euros, he asked me why, and I tried to explain why, without being explicit.

i am inclined to intense menstrual cramps that bring me to my knees but he never figured it out. Yelling matches ensued when I went to bed instead of completing this or that task when I was at the end of my life.

The worst was everything sex education because it was never talked about. Luckily I was in biology class to find out what the clitoris is before the age of 30.

As a teenager, I never felt comfortable with a boy or even with sexuality. My father didn’t stop me from going out, but he did fear of older friends and mixed environments.

Once, my sixth-grade girlfriend sent me a somewhat biased letter, but my dad happened upon it by accident. I let you imagine the embarrassing discussion that followed.

I have sometimes been yelled at for being too friendly with a boy.

These are just a few examples out of many, but in general I was scared of my dad, so me she didn’t tell him anything and I forbade myself many things.

Growing up with my father, what did I learn from him

My father is a very pragmatic person who at the time followed well-established educational principles to which I submitted: I was an excellent student, I was wise, I didn’t say bad words, I respected the whole world…

But when I failed to meet her expectations, the punishment was severe : ranged from the silent treatment to the corporal punishment with or without accessories.

I was beaten because I came home late, I was beaten because I was yelled at, I was beaten because I couldn’t learn the multiplication tables…

Result, it’s fucked, I still don’t know them after the times table of 6 (well yes but I have to think about it RIGHT).

Very soon, I told myself I will never touch a hair of my children. I still remember like it was yesterday how I felt in all those moments. So no, never.

I will never forget even if I forgave. Because my father asked me for forgiveness and he changed a lot.

I also think that if one day I decide to have children and I separate from the second parent, I will leave him be a part of our child’s life. As long as that person wants to be part of it, of course!

Most importantly, I now have the hindsight to see how we have all been unhappy. Including my mother.

My father sacrificed professional promotions and part of his life as a man to his responsibilities as a father. Maybe he sacrificed too much.

that he he would have been happier if you had taken better care of himhis well-being.

I have developed a certain affection for single parents. Raising a child is constant work and doing it alone is extremely complicated.

But I don’t regret anything about my childhood because This experience shaped who I am today.. And I have a lot of love for her.

Do you like our articles? You will love our newsletters! Sign up for free on this page.