Filling the Void

*ATTENTION MOM: Stop reading this post right now. Trust me.*

I lost my virginity when I was 17. As in, 10 short years older than Cora is now. Funny thing is, I didn't want to have sex. Sex wasn't even on my radar.

I was too busy for carnal desires. I was too busy being a good kid. I was too busy making honor roll and being editor of the newspaper and running track. I was too busy filling out FAFSAs and carhoppin' it at A&W and trying on 13 different outfits before finding the perfect ensemble no one would be able to see anyway at the near-pitch-black school dances. Yes, I was busy. Very busy.

But busyness can't mask an overwhelming need to be wanted.

I had sex because I needed my boyfriend to love me. I silenced myself repeatedly when everything inside me was screaming to make it stop. Shut up and do this I told myself instead, and then he will love you.

He never did. And that wasn't his fault.

My husband of almost 11 years is sleeping in the other room. A long night shift has left him exhausted, but when his daughters fling themselves on the bed with wake-up-daddy squeals in a few short hours, he will rub the sleep from his eyes and and tickle them until they shriek. He will cuddle them, and praise them and play baseball with them in the backyard. Weekend after weekend he will drive all over the city and sit wedged between strangers to shout encouragement at his two pint-sized cheerleaders during their blink-and-you'll-miss-it performances. Because that's what daddies do. I know that now.

And I also know that my daughters will never know what it's like to feel abandoned by their father. He's not going anywhere. They will never waste an ounce of energy in an exhaustive attempt to make an absent father proud. He already is. They will never have to explain away his repeated lies and broken promises, because there will never be any to justify.

Sure the day will come when they hate him. They might threaten to run away. They might hurl curse words at him and scream until they've lost their voices and lock themselves in their rooms. I have no doubt the teenage years will be rough. But he will be present through all of this and at the core they will know, without question, that their daddy loves them.

My father could not hold a candle to their father, even though I loved my father as fiercely as they love theirs.

I do not blame him for the way he was, but I do recognize he lived too selfishly to learn how to be a good father. He tried, but at the end of the day he was simply not daddy material. He expressed his love in a language that was foreign to me and therefore not understood at the time. That is why we called him The Progenitor. I believe many of the mistakes I made growing up were directly related to the void left in my life by his inability to parent. I was grasping at any hint of validation to fill that emptiness. I did not want a guy to love me. I needed a guy to love me.

And at 17, I did what I naively thought was necessary to earn that love.

It sucks the air from my lungs thinking that in just a mere 10 years, Cora could be facing that same decision. The magnitude of that potential mistake makes me want to retreat to a corner and rock myself. Will she repeat the immature missteps of her mother? My hope, and I suspect I am speaking for most of the mothers I know, is that she has been raised to believe she is worth more. And she is armed with a weapon I could not fathom: a daddy's complete and utter adoration. His love is a full love, leaving her no void to fill.