I'm 27 now and I've never known my real father or had the desire to find him. I've set up meetings with him to appease my grandmother who believes it was was a hole in my life, but he never showed up. My mother remarried when I was 1 and as far back as I can remember he was always looking out for himself. He would spend money on things we didn't need, and we were by no means a wealthy family. He told me mom when I was 5 that he wanted "a kid of his own" and they had my little brother.

While my mom was pregnant and still working, he quit his supervisor job for no reason. The bills and finances got so bad that he convinced my mother decided to burn own house down to try and claim insurance money. This forced us to move around a lot and sleep on floors of family members houses, until my grandparents let us move in their basment until we got on our feet. They got caught and ended up having to pay for it anyway.

He would always take me and my brother to our uncle's (his brother) house and get totally shit faced, then drive us home. He wasn't necessarily "abusive" but he wasn't loving and I never felt like I could talk to him.

One night I was in my room, we lived in a trailer so the walls are very thin, and I could hear him screaming at my mom. I don't know the full circumstances but it got really bad. That morning my brother and I woke up and got ready for school, my mom was in the kitchen and he was on the couch. My mother and I made eye contact and she knew that I heard the fight. I could see a red mark around her eye but I thought it might have been from crying. I got a note at school to take the bus to my grandparents house and when I got there I saw she had a black eye.

I swore that I would never be a man like him or my real father. I said I would never put my family through anything like that and I would be successful for my mom.

I'm now married with a 1 yr old daughter and my wife and I own our home. My mother watched me graduate an Academy and said she was so proud of me. I knew I succeeded. She was killed in a car wreck in 2013 and it destroyed me, but at least I know that I made her proud.