Simon O. Keene

Professor Toohey

ENG 170-09

Visual Memoir 5

03 May 2023

Passing On

I came across this image while I was scrolling on TikTok one day in my dorm room. Immediately this picture resonated with me in a way that I didn’t know how to explain at first but ultimately, I knew what it was. In society this picture holds true for most people, this image is like the norm in a way. Although when you come from the place and background that I come from you see that this picture is just a son with a place that is waiting to be filled. Often children, where I come from, don’t get to even know their fathers for real or even see them in general. My experience with my father was different, although his presence was kind of there, he was never present so that void in me only continued to grow wider and wider. I think when a male child grows up without a present father figure, they tend to be off-path and go through their life making many mistakes to try and find out what it takes to be a real man. This kind of journey for a child is often one of the strongest battles they will go through in my opinion. In my experience, the only males that I grew up around were an older brother who loathed me and a father who would just do his own thing daily and never really pay much mind to me. I wasn’t a mama’s boy either, I and her would constantly clash heads for the littlest thing in the world like doing everyone’s dishes. I was singled out in a way and because of that I felt that everyone in the house had it out for me, so I distanced myself from everyone and truly became alone. This journey lasted from middle school until high school, eventually, I grew and realized there is no one in this world who will love me as much as my mother does and there is also no one in this world that I owe more than her even if  she didn’t raise me normally. Another thing I realized was that in this world nothing is truly guaranteed for you, not a father, a brother, or even a family, and once you realize that it will bring to light who and what you should be grateful for. To add just because you don’t have what everyone else has doesn’t mean you have less than anyone or anyone has more than you, everything is about how you view it. If you view yourself as a pitiful man because you didn’t have a father figure in your life, then you aren’t a pitiful man because of your absent father but because of your lack of persistence and bravery to rise above what you don’t have and use that as fuel to become someone that doesn’t need that absent father. Along with that should come the fire to want to be the best man that your father will ever see, because one thing I learned is that when people don’t have access to you, they tend to want to watch you every time they get the chance too. In a way I sympathize with those who have an absent father and blame him for everything that has happened to them and leading them into the lifestyle they feel as forced to continue living. I used to have that whole in me that my own father left by not being present, and till this day it’s still somewhat their because I never reached that closure with him for it to go away, but since I had to become a man on my own that whole filled itself slowly and slowly without him having to do or say anything to me. Waiting on your father to come and fix something is just not likely for people where I come from as well as the generation that I come from. Sometimes you had to take break a square off from yourself, and just put it back in yourself, yeah that isn’t the way it was supposed to get filled but in life we don’t always get to choose what happens to us and sometimes we can only accept what has happened, take it on the chin and learn something new every day that we can use to help repair ourselves.