O Father Where Art Thou

I was a boy, just a little boy, left to contemplate the avenue I was to take in my journey to becoming a teenager.
The emotional cataclysm of discovering the reality that I was equipped with the blueprint of creation and the means by which to deliver them. And yet no one to coach me. In my endeavors to explore the ever-growing desires that rise from deep within me, I had questions
No answers offered to me, I embarked on my journey to manhood alone. Armed with a budding intelligence and a mother to cuddle when pain was too much and nights were too long, I had feelings. The kind a man-child has when nature introduces herself in the form of a nightly release that left the mind in bewilderment. I had all of the tools of a man and no man to be the tool by which I could be molded…
O Father Where Art Thou?
In my times of adolescence when parts of society turned their back on me without obvious reason to me and I in my innocent ignorance sought to find the problems inside me, not knowing the ignorance was the societal fixation and problem with what was on the outside of me.
I wore the problem on my skin, left to discover the factual cruelties,
I wore my emotions on my sleeves, left to ponder the purpose for my existence alone.
Tear stained face, burning eyes in the middle of the night with an everlasting prayer on my lips to God to ease the pain and answer the one question that to this day I continue to ask…
O Father Where Art Thou?
When mama cried cause Christmas meant another hustle so her four children could still believe, and I in my quest for reason to belong surrendered my personal happiness in an effort to help her supply more for them.
Taking it upon myself to be the man I was struggling to learn how to be thrust into a role I had yet to be fully prepared for.
A man-child forced to be a man. A child of a man who, in his actions, defies the very definition of his own existence.
I had fought to become what you refused to be. All the while I struggled with the reality that I was so ill equipped to handle the trials and tribulations of high school, because I was too focused on being the man that you don’t know how to be.
Walking the footsteps of the man I imagine I should be, not having the guide that I so deserved in a world unforgiving to the weak and unrelenting in its tests of the strong. With my back against a wall crying out with all my heart…
O Father Where Art Thou
Was it the sight of my face that drove you to become another statistic on the deadbeat list, while I came up short trying to fill the emotional shoes you left empty at home?
Am I to be cursed with an inability to look responsibility in the face and stand my ground?
You left me hanging. In my most dire time of need.
You left me hanging. With a resounding pain in my soul.
You left me hanging. With all the love in the heart of a young man needing a role model after which to pattern his life.
You left me!
No good-bye, no apology, no “I will return.”
You left me with broken hopes, empty promises and unfulfilled commitments.
You left me with nothing but a mother stronger then any beautiful woman should ever have to be in a time when a child needed all the guidance in the world and an unanswered question even to this day many years later…
O Father Where Art Thou?