Personal Narrative: My Father Figure

A father figure is a vital role in a child’s life. Some people are fortunate to have a positive role model in their lifetime. Father figures teach us about self-discipline, emotional needs, trustworthiness, independence, ethics, hard labor, etc. Unfortunately, not everyone has positive experiences with their fathers. Negative father figures display characteristics of hypocrisy, deceit, betrayal, and anger. These aspects most exemplified themselves when my father cheated on my mother. My father, Roberto Mendez II, was a poor representation of a positive father figure. I learned not through his words, but by his actions. I failed to learn crucial lessons during my development. Consequently, my growth as a responsible individual was slow, and …show more content…
Work often took a significant amount of time out of his schedule. Typically, he is often frustrated and angry, which makes him off-putting. Rarely, when he would be drinking, did my father would try to connect on a personal level. However, it was only during those times I felt I had a father who was interested in me. Thus, I avoided him as much as I could, knowing misery would be not far behind. Consequently, I, along with my other siblings, lacked support emotionally, socially, and academically. By the time I graduated high school, I was still entirely dependent on my parents and did not have the means to live on my own. Though my mother and father claimed to be happy together, they brought out the worst in one another. Whenever an issue arose, they would either ignore or escalate the situation. He would often invest their income in jobs that failed to bear fruit. Their relationship strained further when he cheated on my mother not once, but twice. My mother would often stay up late at night crying, shunning away my father as he pleaded that he’d change. Eventually, my mother forgave him, yet my father would see his illegitimate children in secret. Finally, my mother decided that she no longer needed my father to support her emotionally. Thus, she left for Mexico shortly after that, leaving him with the responsibilities she had been doing such as the mortgage or car payments. My father and I take care of my younger sister. At first,