The Words From My Son That Filled Me With Both Shame and Hope

I’ve spent my life trying to be someone else. Now I have to become the man he already thinks I am.

Photo by Harika G on Unsplash

We were driving the winding mountain road between his school and home when my son said the words I’ve been both dreaming and dreading since I first held him in my arms.

“When I’m a grown-up, I want to be just like you.”

I used to imagine him saying those words. I thought I’d feel proud. Instead, I felt hollow.

The day he was born was the happiest day of my life. It was the realization of a lifelong dream. It was, in its way, a signal that I’d “made it.” I had married a wonderful woman. I was making money. I owned a home. And now, I was a father.

Four years later, navigating those mountain road curves, my life trajectory had reversed. A combination of bad luck and poor decisions left me unemployed. Months of sending resumés, sweating through interviews, and standing in line at job fairs have sucked the pride from me and left me grasping for strategies to maintain strength and resolve. I’ve recognized that while I was doing well four years ago, I’d arrived there without a map—following winding whims, just as I had done my whole life.

In elementary school, bullied and tormented for my awkwardness and disability, I wanted a work uniform and boots just like my dad’s. In high school, I mimicked the popular kids in hopes they’d accept me. I managed to fit in, barely, but I was so focused on being “cool” that my grades suffered. In college, I tried to project an air of mystique. In public, I quoted Kerouac and grew long hair and a goatee to try to look like Johnny Depp. In private, my undiagnosed mental health issues unraveled me. Desperate for acceptance, I had spent most of my life mimicking others instead of becoming myself. I didn’t see anything about me worth amplifying. Only failures.

It took nearly a decade of slow growth for me to become the version of me that my wife met and married. And even that was barely a rough draft. Still aimless. Still, deep down, I was unconvinced that I was anything more than a failure in a mask.

The day my son was born, I felt a first hint of an identity I could be proud of. I was a dad. But since then, anytime I recognized anything of myself in him, I panicked. Because I couldn’t see myself in his smile or his goofiness or his sweetness. I saw myself in the inattention, the whining, the craving for coddling over independence.

As we rounded the last big curve toward our house, I glanced in the rearview mirror. He looked back at me with his beautiful blue eyes and smiled.

“I love you, buddy.”

“I love you, too, Daddy! Soooooo much!”

As sometimes happens, this jolt of realization hit me: I’m thinking about this all wrong. When he says he wants to be just like me, he doesn’t know all of the failures. He doesn’t know how I got here. He knows what he sees. He’s mostly oblivious to the parts of me I’m ashamed of. Looking back at me in that mirror, he sees the man who pushes him on the swing, kisses his boo boos when he falls, reads him bedtime stories, and lies with him until he falls asleep.

And then another jolt: I have to remember that for every failure, there was a resurgence. I’ll never be done failing, but I’m done navigating whims. I have direction now, and I can move forward with intention. I must rebuild myself from the ground up. The void inside me that I used to fill with borrowed identities can now be filled with patience, courage, and honesty. It’s time not just to model, but to become the kind of person I want my children to be, so I can help them navigate life’s curves with confidence and get back up when they fall. And I can give them something I never had—a map to find who they are.

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