I approached our table at a beautiful al fresco restaurant in Bucharest, feeling refreshed from a day of solo sightseeing. Beige umbrellas cast shadows on the flawless skin of my fellow travelers, a group of fabulous senior citizens bound by their time served as Philippine Airlines stewardesses. Though my mood was airy, there was a heaviness to the characteristically chipper ensemble.
They were silent.
After placing my order, I excused myself to the restroom, tailed by two of my Titas. One grabbed my arm with a gravity I’d never seen in her twinkling eyes, then said, “We had no idea she was like this. You’re not the problem.”
My mom has a way of spinning a tale that paints me in the most negative of lights.
“She’s in school,” I overheard her telling her contemporaries in the Airbnb the night before.
“Still?” one asked incredulously. “How old is she?”
I wasn’t in school. At the ripe old age of I’ll never tell, I made a living tending bar. By “school,” she meant my acting classes, a detail she used to upgrade my life.
To her, pretending I was in college was less embarrassing than admitting I wasn’t a successful corporate anything. Her friends’ children were doctors, CEOs, or married, after all.
I can only imagine what she’s told them over the years. Having opinions that strayed from “respect your elders” was an offense punishable by shit-talking and abandonment in my family. Boy, did I serve some time.
So yes, I was shocked when my aunt pulled me aside and told me that I wasn’t the problem.
Naturally, I asked why.
“We wanted to know if you were in contact with John, and she freaked out. She started yelling, crying, asking us why we would ever talk about John. We didn’t know she would be this affected by him. It’s been 30 years.”
The only memory I had of John, my father, was horseback riding in Tagaytay when I was three.
My mother and I don’t talk about my dad, to the point that I don’t know my own personal mythology. I don’t know how they met, why they had me, why they didn’t get married, or why he wasn’t a part of my life.
All I knew was that he was a DJ, Irish, 6 feet tall, and blind in one eye.
I don’t remember being very curious about this missing person. In fact, other people in my life showed more of an interest in him than I did. Men, mostly. Surprised?
There was Tinder Date Dude, a bleached-blond, underweight hipster from New York who shook like a Chihuahua. He ghosted me after our fourth date. Sure, I wasn’t in love with him. But he literally searched for my absent father online. Am I wrong for believing I was owed a simple “I’m just not that into you” text?
Next, there was the friend of a friend I made the mistake of actually dating for over six months. Word from the semi-wise: if a man needs AirPods in his ears from the moment he wakes up until the moment he goes to sleep, RUN. There are thoughts in there he is desperately trying not to meet.
One night the subject of my father came up. This man talked about his white-trash bloodline so often that, to this day, I refuse to listen to another rags-to-riches story. Eventually, I guess, it was my bloodline’s turn.
“Let’s just message him right now. I’ll do it.”
And he did.
He messaged my dad.
No response.
The third attempt at least came from someone I trusted, a fellow musician with more daddy issues than me.
By then I about my father's new family. He had remarried another Filipina, moved back to the Philippines, and had four children. One was a DJ. Another was apparently in line to be Miss Philippines.
That was enough to get rewriting history. Maybe my string of acting jobs, which started with a Pizza Hut commercial in the Philippines, would’ve blossomed into an actual career. Maybe I would’ve had someone to guide me through my decades as an unsuccessful musician. Maybe I could’ve traveled the world DJing for seas of people too.
It’s in the blood.
Friend number three found my father on Instagram and started gassing me up.
“What have you got to lose? If he doesn’t respond, your life doesn’t change. If he does, maybe you can have a relationship with him.”
So my friend slid into my father’s DMs, posing as a fan, and got a response.
Then I sent my father a message...
...and was left on read.
My ego wants to say I wasn’t affected. Part of me still chooses to believe that story.
When I was 22, I received a message on MySpace from a stranger named Matt. I was exhausted from dancing to drum n bass at San Francisco’s LoveFest. Sitting next to my best friend, still sporting her iconic sequin butterfly halter, I opened the message thinking nothing of it. Just another creep fishing for a date, I assumed.
Matt started asking questions only someone with ties to my family would know to ask.
Turns out Matt was my father’s best friend.
He lived in San Francisco and said that if I ever wanted to meet him, he was there. My father, apparently, had been looking for me for years. Matt had found me first but wanted to give John the chance to find me on his own.
The message ended with “John loves you very much.”
I cried.
That was the first admission, involuntary as it was, that I cared. Even then, I was looking for love in all the wrong places. Every drink was a replacement for intimacy. Every unanswered text I excused as part of life. Every DJ I decided to fall in like with was just another fantasy that disappeared in a week.
None of it was enough anymore. I was tired of pretending that scraps of attention counted as love.
I wasn’t ready to meet Matt then. I wasn’t ready to meet my father either.
I never asked my mom about her freakout in Bucharest. We spent the rest of the trip pretending it didn’t happen.
I still haven’t pursued a relationship with John, even though I know how to find him.
I think part of what stops me is the guilt wrapped up in my relationship with my mom. I feel like I don’t get to go searching for the parent who wasn’t there when I still haven’t figured out my relationship with the one who was. The one who stayed.
Maybe I need to understand her part of my history before I go looking for his.