The year was 1996 when my sis and I met our future step-dad. My Aunt Darlene introduced him to my mother. They shook hands, and when he went to say hi to my sis, she stuck her tongue at him. And I just glared at him. Usually in a fractured family , the kids usually have an animosity toward men. I mean any man they think will take their mom from them, thus taking their power to run the show.
I really appreciate my step-dad nowadays, for being the man in my life, being a father. I don't even call him by his first name, I call him Dad.
It took years for me to respect my Dad, I mean I fully didn't understand he wouldn't leave until I was fifteen of sixteen. I didn't stop telling lies about him until I was seventeen, until in the last few hours of summer camp 2009. Back in sixth grade, I was within moments of being moved into custody of Health & Welfare, because of me telling lies to my teachers.
Now, I'm working at fixing the fractured relationship with my father. And its going good. I mean, him and I have been able to have serious conversations with each other without me being a (insert favorite cuss word) about it.
But when I was little it wasn't always my sister and I trying to scheme, and get this man out of our lives. I have found memories of my dad and I filling a wall in our garage with putty.
He was the best thing that ever happened to my family. He was still ready to raise me like a normal child, even when I was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
He refused to feel sorry for me, for which I applaud him greatly for now. I look at other teens who have this deadly disease , and think they are wimps. I don't mean to be rude. It's my observation. Their parents treat them like the disease has damned their kids. That they will be nothing. Just a reed in the wind.
I have always been told by my Dad to believe not that there might be a cure. But that there will be a cure. And when there will be a cure, I need to be ready to live a normal life.
I need to be ready to escape the prison of my wheelchair, and be the man I was raised to be. Regardless, cure or not, I will choose to be a man.
Just like my Dad, Michael S.