Since I started writing professionally in 2016, I have used parts of my life in my work. Personal essays were the place I found my footing as a writer. It came at a time when I really needed it — I was a single mom to a toddler, had just ended a six year relationship, and was living with my parents. I wrote through everything: my parenting struggles, my financial woes, my relationship with my mom, my friendships.

I’m pretty unashamed about what I write about. Writing is my way of processing things in my life. Whether I’m writing through an experience or sharing an experience I’ve already been through, I can go back and remember where I was at and how far I’ve come since. Some would question why I need to publish my writing if I’m using it to process my own life. Shouldn’t I just keep a journal? I will say this: if there’s one thing I’ve learned in seven years of writing personal essays it’s that you just never know who may need to read your words. I have gotten emails from strangers saying how reading something I’ve written has helped them feel less alone, or that I gave them something to think about that they hadn’t before. It warms my heart (and even makes me cry!) when I get an email from a single mom who found my essay and saw herself in my words.

Helping someone feel less alone is one of the main reasons I’ve written so much about being a parent. It has not been an easy road, but writing through it has absolutely helped me cope with those hard parts. When our brilliant managing editor Kayla approached me earlier this year about writing a parenting column for Autostraddle, I jumped at the chance to share my parenting journey with a new community of parents. Since coming out, I was craving a space to connect with queer parents, and this was the perfect opportunity.

One of the things I’ve written about often in the past is my relationship with my ex and co-parenting my son with him. It has never been particularly easy, but I’ve always managed to make it work the best way I can. Last month, I wrote about the most recent co-parenting challenge I was facing. My ex was staying with us on and off for four months while he looked for a new place to live. I invited him to stay, and continued to invite him to stay. It made my son happy to have his dad close by, but it was by no means an easy experience. Having an extended houseguest is difficult no matter what, but for that person to be your ex-boyfriend? It’s fucking brutal.

My partner is an absolute champ. Still, it was hard on her to have him around. She felt a constant need to impress him and prove to him that she was a competent partner and parent to my son, even though she absolutely did not have anything to worry about. The apartment needed to be immaculately clean, and when it wasn’t, she would vibrate with anxiety until we got the time to clean. His presence put a strain on our relationship in several ways. We like staying up late to watch TV after my son goes to bed, and we couldn’t because my ex was sleeping on my couch. Plus, she didn’t feel comfortable having sex if he was staying with us. I certainly didn’t love being cockblocked.

The biggest issue I had (and the thing I wrote my column about) is that even though my ex was sleeping on my couch, he wasn’t being a present parent for my son. It was hard to watch. My ex had been living with his parents in another state for almost two years, and my son missed having a dad. I thought that being in the same home as my son would give his dad the opportunity to parent in a way he hadn’t been able to for so long. Boy was I wrong. The only quality time he spent with him were the couple times my partner and I went out. He had months to make up for lost time, and he just didn’t. It was incredibly disheartening for me to witness as a mom. My son didn’t say anything, but I knew he was bummed about his dad not paying him more attention. When he’d get home from school, he’d excitedly ask if his dad was around, and his face was so defeated when I’d tell him no.

All my son has ever wanted is to have a solid relationship with his dad. Going back to when he was a toddler, he was never interested in moms, he always gravitated to the dads. It never bothered me, because I understood it. He spent a lot of time with my dad when he was a toddler, and he knew that he had a dad of his own, they just saw each other on video chat. He cherished the time he got to spend with his dad, and I don’t think my ex realizes just how much my son idolizes him. Because he really does love his dad so very much. It’s so fucking frustrating that my ex is completely oblivious.

I approached my column like I do anything I write: I wrote it from a very honest place, and I didn’t really hold back on making my feelings on the subject clear. I was pissed that after all the time he had to be a dad, he simply chose not to be one. Even when the opportunity was literally placed in his lap, he was actively choosing not to be a present parent. My kid’s dad just assumed that the bare minimum he’d been doing would be enough, and I found that astounding.

I made it abundantly clear in my writing that his inability to show up for my son wasn’t a new thing, happening for the first time, but was indicative of how he approached parenting for the almost ten years that my son has been alive. It was the unchanging behavior that made me the most upset.

The column went live, and I expected people to comment on it. My columns usually get comments, and I know the subject of co-parenting was sure to get people sharing their own thoughts or experiences. Some comments focused on the fact that my ex was sleeping on the couch and how uncomfortable that must have been for me and my partner. Others gave me unsolicited parenting advice. I barely take advice from people I know, but I’m definitely not taking it from total strangers who know nothing about me and my family other than what I choose to share in my writing. So, I didn’t give those comments much thought because I never do. Once I write something and it’s published, it’s not just mine anymore; I let it go.

But I had no idea what kind of a shitstorm was coming.

Several days after the column was published, my ex found it. I got a notification that he left a comment and immediately I felt like I was going to throw up. My hands shook as I locked myself in my bathroom to read the comment that can only be described as unhinged. Thankfully he wasn’t in my apartment at the time, but I knew he was coming back. He was sleeping on my couch that weekend and this was going to turn into something much bigger than it ever needed to.

The only good thing is that I had time to sit with my partner and try to figure out what I was going to say when the inevitable confrontation happened. When I read the comment, she was on her way home from work, and I can only imagine how panicked I looked when she walked through the front door. I quickly pulled her into the bedroom to talk where my son wouldn’t be able to hear us. We sat on the bed, and she wrapped her arms around me. I was still tense, but being in her arms allowed me to relax enough to form coherent thoughts. She read his comment, and I could sense her anger and frustration grow as she took in what he said.

“What am I going to do?” I asked her, my eyes pleading.
“Just tell the truth. I’ll be right here,” she kissed my forehead.

I didn’t want a fight, but I knew that one was coming — we had never been able to have a civilized conversation when it came to tough subjects. I didn’t regret anything I wrote, the feelings I shared were mine and I didn’t want him to make me feel bad about them. I was worried that he was going to try and gaslight me into apologizing for something I wasn’t sorry for.

The conversation went about as well as I anticipated. He came in immediately confrontational, and while I tried to remain calm, he was highly emotional and started yelling. Then I started yelling, which I didn’t want to do because my son was in the house and is incredibly sensitive to confrontation. Even though my partner promised not to leave my side, I sent her to be with my son so that he wasn’t alone and scared. Her absence left me more vulnerable than I wanted to be, but ultimately I was able to maintain most of the calm I was hoping for.

It was not an easy conversation to have, mainly because it brought up so much past hurt for me. Ten years ago when my son was born, my relationship with my ex completely changed. So many times when I look at him, I can’t believe we were ever together. I don’t know if his insecurity, paranoia and lowkey toxic masculinity were always there and I didn’t notice them, or if they grew out of the ways the last ten years shaped him, but it’s heartbreaking to look at a person you once loved with your entire heart and see a stranger.

Much of the point that I was trying to get across was that I shouldn’t have to ask him to be a father to my son. We were in our late 20s when my son was born — we weren’t children who didn’t know anything about being adults. Both of us grew up in houses where our parents were together, they still are. All that to say, he had examples of how to be a father. And he could take those examples and use them to shape who he wanted to be as a dad, just like I did when I was figuring out who I was as a mom. He chose to be in our son’s life, even though his actions didn’t always make it seem like he wanted to be. So if he was choosing to be there, he should have done the work to figure out how he was going to do it. I shouldn’t have had to spoon-feed him everything.

My son is truly one of a kind. I know I’m his mom and I’m biased, but there are so many people who say the same thing. His first grade teacher once called him a “Renaissance Man” because of his ability to be so adaptable. Teachers at his school who don’t even have him in their class will go out of their way to tell me what a great kid he is. Friends of mine who only know him from social media are some of his biggest cheerleaders. My son is funny and kind and full of empathy and loves so so so fiercely. I love him so much it hurts. If you spend more than ten minutes with him you will fall in love with him.

There are so many people in my life who don’t get to have the kind of relationship with my son that they wish they could have because they don’t live near us. My parents live across the country, and it hurts so much that they’re missing out on watching him grow up. If he asked my mom for her right arm, she’d find a saw and cut it off herself. He replaced me as my dad’s favorite person, for good reason. His aunts and uncles and older cousins adore him. As much as my best friend misses me, she misses my son, too. She wants to be the grownup he goes to when he wants to get away from me and his stepmom. They would all kill to get to see my son as much as his dad currently has the ability to. And it hurts so much that he squanders his opportunities to get to know the son that he claims to love and wants to be around.

I don’t think he’s ever made a true effort to get to know the amazing kid he helped create. Everyone always gives me credit for raising a great kid, but I can’t accept it. He was born special, I merely try to keep him on the right track. It’s a gift to get to do so, because I get to watch him figure out the world around him. He’s quirky and silly, and at an age that is so unbelievably fun. We can have real conversations about things like current events, relationships, everything. I love seeing his creativity, whether he’s creating a blaster out of LEGOS or learning a new song by ear on his cello. His dad rarely gets to see these sides of him because he’s not here.

Of course, I had to talk all of this out with my therapist. I told her all about the confrontation and how I was feeling unsettled about the whole thing. She knew that all of this frustration was there, but that I also didn’t feel like talking to him about it would be productive for me. I truly couldn’t fathom why my ex felt like I had to be the one to tell him how to be a dad. Talk about weaponized incompetence. Then, the subject of my relationship with my own father came up. I wasn’t expecting that.

My dad and I are very close. I am the youngest of his kids and the only one he raised from infancy to adulthood. He and my mom briefly separated when I was a preschooler, but he never let that stand in the way of us having a relationship. No matter what problems he and my mom had (and trust me, there were MANY), he was the one who read me a bedtime story at night and quit smoking cigars when they impaired his ability to do so, the one who would buy me new Barbie dolls, who schlepped me to the borough-wide band rehearsals when I played clarinet in elementary school. As much as he hated having to deal with other parents, he was at every dance recital and school play. He cried when I graduated from high school and shook the hands of every Black parent at my college graduation.

That’s not to say that my relationship with my dad is easy. We fight a lot. There was a several week period where he unfriended me on Facebook after one fight. The only reason we started talking again after that was because I found out I was pregnant.

In the summer of 2021, right after a trip to visit him and my mom, my dad called me. He sounded weird.

“I’m a drug addict Sa’iyda. I’m addicted to crack,” he told me. My mom had kicked him out and he was staying at a halfway house.

In that moment my world was knocked off its axis. I had seen him literal weeks before, my suitcase only recently unpacked. When he called me, I was getting ready to take my son to a movie screening, and I felt like my brain was on fire. It didn’t matter that I needed to get ready to leave, I called my mom to check on her. She assured me that she was okay, and made my partner promise to keep an eye on me until we could talk again later.

During our conversation that evening, she explained what made her kick him out, and shared that she was just as shocked as I was. I also learned that this wasn’t the first time my dad was addicted; he first started doing drugs when I was a toddler, but eventually kicked the habit. I had never known about his previous battle with addiction.

It explained a lot about parts of my childhood. My dad would disappear for days at a time with no warning or explanation. We never talked about it — I never asked, and he never brought it up. His confession forced me to confront those occurrences and other shit I had been avoiding about my childhood.

When I talked to my therapist about my ex, this was the thing that was at the front of my mind. If my crack addict dad could show up for me all the time, how the hell could my son’s father not do the same? I know he has a lot of his own things going on, but how is that consistently more important than his only child? How could he be so selfish to take his relationship with my son for granted when so many people would willingly take his place?

My ex is not the type of person who I can have a meaningful conversation with, I learned that years ago. But I wish I could ask him. I know some of it is his warped sense of manhood, but my son doesn’t care about that. He wants a fucking dad to toss a ball with. He wants a dad who will attend his cello performances and take him to a baseball game.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m expecting too much from my ex, but then I think about my dad — and I don’t think so. If you want to be in your kid’s life, you show up, end of story. I shouldn’t have to ask my son’s father to want to spend time with his kid. I shouldn’t have to say, “oh hey, I’d really like to take my partner out on a date, can you be a dad for a few hours?”

Since our conversation, he is making slightly more effort to be around, but with a new school year starting, I have very low expectations of him following through. I’m hoping that he proves me wrong. Not because I want to be right, but because it’s what my son deserves.

I’ve also done some reflecting on my own role in this. My motivation for facilitating a relationship between my son and his father is rooted in the fact that I don’t ever want my son to look at me and blame me for coming between the two of them. That’s why I ask and ask his father to be there and show up. Because I have seen the kind of fractured relationship a man has with his father when he wasn’t there for him. And while it might seem self-centered, I don’t want to be the villain in this story. I’ve realized though, you can’t make someone be a parent when they don’t want to be. If he’s going to have a relationship with his dad, his dad is going to have to be the one to make the effort, I can only make sure my son’s available.

Kelly Clarkson has a song called “Piece By Piece” that she wrote about her own fractured relationship with her absentee father and how her (now ex) husband was helping her put herself back together. Since her divorce, she’s changed the lyrics and inserted herself as the hero of the story.

”I’ll never walk away, I’ll never break their hearts.
I’ll take care of things, when you leave scars.”

When I heard her sing it, I wept. I saw myself in those lyrics, and realized that I’m the hero in this story because I’m the one who shows up. No matter what, I will never walk away. And I hope my son knows that.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!