Missing you

Today I sent a text to a friend. It simply said "sometimes I miss you" and, although you would never know it, I am very shy and so I felt very vulnerable. It's always about rejection is it not, when you decide to tell someone how you feel. Later, having lunch at my favorite location, I was talking to the owner about her son and she told me how mad he was at his father. His father has never "been there" for him and so, at the tender age of 24, he has decided that the non-existence of his father is better than recognition. I cringed.

I never wanted to be an absentee father. I am divorced and my two sons live in a different state. My father was not "there" for me. In fact, until I was in my late thirties I had never heard my father say the words "I love you." This story is not atypical and in many cases they are too much the norm. And then I though of my friend who I missed and remembered that she too had an absent father. We are all in this together. All wanting to give voice to our feelings of abandonment and wanting someone to miss us, to value us. I want my sons to know I miss and love them and my friends to know that I miss them sometimes. I want to be missed.