You must be asking yourself, "Is this girl crazy?"
Well, I assure you I am not.
I am the product of years of struggle and lessons learned.
I was born into the most clichéd American Dream you can imagine.
My father was a doctor, my mother was a stay-at-home wife and I had three brothers -- all close in age -- to enjoy life with.
Then, disaster struck. Life snuck up on us as we watched the perfect life we were living crumble all around us.
Daddy's little princess had to face the reality that at 9 years old, her dad was leaving her and her whole family behind for not only another woman, but for her best friend's mom and family.
He up and left, and didn't look back.
So, what did my father abandoning me teach me? Let me count the ways:
1. Nothing in life is guaranteed.
Our lives are not made from movies or novels, and happy endings sometimes don't last forever.
At any moment of any day, your world can fall apart.
Therefore, you must always be able to find the strength within yourself to overcome travesties. They will happen often and usually, when you least expect them.
2. Just because your father didn't love you enough to stay, it doesn't mean people will always hurt you.
After years of terrible relationships and getting hurt (which is a natural course of life), it will start to feel like everyone will leave you because your father set a precedent.
But that's simply not true.
Everyone gets hurt and abandoned.
The moment you realize your father leaving doesn't set the tone for your life, but rather, everyone goes through the same kind of loss at some point, you will stop feeling so alone in the world.
You can still find a way to believe in the good in people.
3. The relationships you develop with men will never be the same, but that's okay.
You will cherish love more, whether from a boyfriend, a brother, an uncle or any male figure in your life.
You will hold these men to a higher degree of respect and love in your heart because they chose to love you when they didn't need to.
The only man obligated to love you left. But that's okay because you learned devotion is more valuable than genetics.
It's the people who stand by you and support you, regardless of obligations, who truly matter.
4. You will have better friendships with men than with women.
This is because your instinctual need to fill the void created by your father’s absence will make you hungry for male attention.
You will find comfort in their arms, make them feel more special out of fear of them leaving and feed into their caveman-like need to protect a woman.
You will be adored for your vulnerability, and cherished more than you ever thought possible.
5. You will embrace your womanhood.
I'm sorry, but you will.
You can only fight it for so long.
At some point, you will become enamored by a string of meaningless, one-night-stands. You will get high off the attention and belief that these men wanting you in a sexual way will build up your self-esteem.
The down side is, it will also crush you twice as hard when they don’t want you for anything more than a late-night booty call.
The good news is, through all these sexual encounters, you will learn what you like and don’t like. You will embrace your sexuality openly for the sake of all women.
6. You will learn what kind of men you shouldn't go for.
You will like the challenge of having to win someone over who shouldn’t want you. When you do, you will feel such a thrill of victory.
But that only lasts a little while. Then, you realize you’re the side chick everyone hates, or you realize you just boned someone your father possibly went to primary school with.
Gross.
However, you will soon learn to keep your hands off men who belong to someone else and those who are too old to know how to work an iPhone.
7. Your ability to adapt will be outstanding.
You have been through hell and back.
You've felt unloved, made bad decisions and woken up covered in your own vomit next to a guy you don’t remember meeting more than once.
But after you're forced to live with the shame of these mistakes, ridiculed and definitely judged for them, you will develop the thickest skin imaginable.
You will stop caring what people think, and you will use these experiences to grow into the person you want to become.
You will have no fear of starting over because you have picked yourself off the floor literally more times than you can count.
You will use it as fuel to make yourself a better version of the person you were.
8. You will be a better person after experiencing all of this.
It's only after putting our hands on the hot stove as children that we learn not to do it.
The same rule comes into play with the multitude of wrong decisions you will make subconsciously to fill the void of being abandoned.
However, the bright side is this: You will become a stronger, smarter and wiser individual after learning the lessons your mistakes have taught you.
You will become the person people can rely on because you won't abandon anyone.
You will be sought out for advice by everyone in your life because you’ve lived through enough to see situations with clarity, and you aren’t afraid to be honest with people.
You will have better relationships (after a couple of really bad ones) because you are loyal and hungry to share the love you couldn’t transfer to your father.
You will appreciate significant others more and not be afraid to show it.
Embrace your daddy issues and let them help you evolve as a person.
The best way to overcome them is to realize that by your father leaving, you had to live a hard life. But it's one that's taught you lessons you wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
You don’t need to be a daddy’s girl to be perfect. You just need to be happy with yourself, and find acceptance and validation from within.
Every day, you need to wake up and make a choice. You can either forever feel sorry for yourself, or you can be a shining example of how pain and loss makes you stronger.
