I remember the day I came home from school that autumn evening. I was 12, full of life, energy, and excitement. It was just a normal night for me, except this night. This night was the night I had to grow up sooner than I ever wanted.

I hadn’t seen you in almost two years, and prior to that maybe a handful of times. You called me, and told me you were about to board a plane to move across the country. You said “I’m sorry, and I love you”, Not a day has gone by since that moment. I had these questions burning in my head, “How can you leave me here?”, “I thought I was your baby boy?”, “ Why don't you love me enough to stay?”. You kept in touch but a phone call twice a month went to once a month, to once in a while, to barley remembering my birthday, to maybe four times a year now.

Granted this wasn't the first time, I still remember that day when I was almost 6. Daddy came to pick me up for what I thought was a normal weekend at dad’s, but I didn't come back home I stayed. I didn't think much of it at the time due to the sheer excitement of being with my dad. The man who to this day I still idolize, but something was wrong.

I needed you, just like any boy needs his mom, but you left. You didn't even give me a chance to give you one last hug. Like a ghost, you vanished right in front of my eyes. I remember crying myself to sleep that night full of emotions, emotions I didn't even know existed, nor should I have known them at such a young age.

I remember the feeling of hate, discontent, abandonment, and unwanted. I woke up the next day and put a smile on my face like I did when you choose some guy over me. That was the moment I stopped trusting people, that was the moment I saw the real you, that was the moment I had to grow up. Looking back now I can barely remember your face, the way you would kiss my forehead before bed, or the stories you read to me when I was a kid.

You leaving transcended into a turmoil of bad relationships, because of you I don’t trust easily. I find it easier to run before I let someone inside my walls. I find it easier to keep the past bottled up and hidden, out of fear. Not fear of them leaving, but them asking “what is wrong with him, his own mom left him which must mean their is something wrong with him”. Not only did trust issues follow after your departure, but so did a feeling of never being good enough. After you left I would find myself in front of a mirror asking my self “ what did I do wrong”. Slowly as the years went by i started to understand it had nothing to do with me. I use to think I was nothing more but a mistake to you, and maybe I was, but I found the strength with-in myself to love myself.

I wanted you to want or even need me half as much as I needed my mom. As time progressed I realized that I couldn't beg you to want me, I realized you weren't coming home, I realized my mommy and daddy would never be a family again. Though I always wished for us to be a family, I love my new family. I have an amazing dad who is always there for me, even when I’m wrong, I have two extraordinary brothers who became my role models, and a mom who is like my best friend, my cheerleader, and my savior in a way. She had to rebuild faith in me that a mom could stay, she had to pick up the pieces of a mess you made (and she didn't have to nor was she asked).

I still find myself by the phone once in awhile waiting for a call to prove my fears wrong, the fear that you moved past me as your child. I still find myself at night asking the picture of you hanging in my room “where’d you go”.

Sometimes I think I hate you, but in the end I can’t. You gave birth to me, you are my mother, and you are a part of me. Though i will never understand your decision to leave me behind, i can understand how you must of had the feeling of wanting, the feeling of wanting a life, you were younger than what I am now when you gave birth. You never got the chance to be a young woman, you never got the chance to be you, you never got to make honest mistakes and learn from them. Now I’m 21 almost 22, and I still miss you. You now have a separate family away from me. I have two sisters who I met a couple of times. I hope you show them the love you never showed me, I hope you don't taint them the way you tainted me, but most of all I hope you stick by them no matter what.