One thing that you might be surprised to find out about me...

One thing that you might be surprised to find out about me is that I'm half Chinese. But I am probably the least Chinese person that you will ever meet which kinda upsets me. I would love to have had the chance to embrace my Chinese heritage BUT I've not seen my dad since I was 12 or spoken to him since I was 15. Which even at the age of 41 breaks my heart.

The heartbreak

Whenever I think about him I get an intense feeling of sadness in my whole body and if I let that feeling come over me for longer than 10 seconds I would probably have a little cry. You see I was a daddy's girl. I adored my dad. So I guess you can say that I had my heart broken for the first time when he left my mum (after he had an affair) when I was 3 and then it has been broken again slowly over time with him ghosting me for the past 25 years.

The back story

The story with him not contacting me is that he went to live in Singapore, married a local woman and never told her that he had children in the UK. He apparently has another 3 kids now that know nothing about me and my siblings. We are his forgotten family. There are photographs of us as little kids in his mum’s (my grandmother’s) house and when he goes there apparently he pretends that we are his nieces. Despite knowing this I have always had a wish that he would come back into my life and tell me that it was all a mistake and that he would be a dad to me again.

My olive branch

I tried to make contact with him when my second daughter Agnes was born. His sister/my aunt is on facebook and she got in touch with him and the response that he gave was that he thought it was better for each of us to continue our lives without each other. My heart broke a little bit more when I got that message. I literally sobbed and sobbed. Then I got angry about the fact that he could erase me from his memory, but every time I looked in the mirror at the shape of my eyes and the shape of my daughter’s eyes that his DNA was right there. Even though time has passed and I am a mum, it doesn't change the fact that I am his child and he wants nothing to do with me.

My own happy ending

For as long as I can remember I subconsciously believed that if my Dad loved me enough then he would’ve stayed, and that was my belief until I examined that thought as an adult. I now know that him having an affair and leaving wasn’t anything to do with me, and nor is him ghosting me. It s ALL about him. However, all of this sh*t with my Dad definitely added fuel to the fire of my 'not-enoughness' that was burning hella brightly until I went on my own self-worth journey a few years ago and stamped that f*cker out.