Fragile Families

I know this isn't true, and is thus entirely irrational, but sometimes when I'm listening to lectures, I feel like the speaker is talking about ME. For instance, we had a guest lecturer in my Sociology class on Tuesday, speaking about research she and a team of grad students had just done on Fragile Families--children born out of wedlock and the tenuous ties that bind their parents. She kept talking about these people, these children, these parents, like they were so far removed from our current situation, and the whole time I just wanted to scream YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT ME!
She said a lot of things I don't agree with about children supposedly like me, but if being a SOC major has taught me anything so far, it's that I'm not like anyone who falls into any of the same categories as me. Comparison is futile. So I fumed silently, then finally treated myself to a Starbucks coffee mug to make myself feel better.
But early this morning, as I was laying in bed trying to go back to sleep, I realized she was right about how the introduction of new partners into the family and the dissolution of those relationships is stressful for the child involved. I had been refuting this because the dissolution of my mother's marriage was perhaps one of the most joyous occasions of my life. But laying in my bed, I began to feel this forbidden ache: I was again missing the one person I'm really not allowed to miss.
Greg. My mom's ex-boyfriend. I recognize that he was not right for her, and that the best decision for her personally was to terminate this relationship. I understand that, and on some level I am proud of her for being able to make the decision to walk away...in the past, I have known her to fear solitude over second-best relationships. 
And yet. Greg is one of those people that makes me question whether there is someone somewhere with some great big plan in which everything happens for a reason, because even if the 6 years or so he and my mom spent together weren't right for either of them, in some respect they were perfect for me. ...Wow, I didn't mean for that to sound so damned selfish. It's like, I mean no disrespect to my actual father, and all the disrespect possible to my ex-stepfather, when I say this, but in many ways, Greg is the closest thing to a traditional father I have ever known. (Not that he's very traditional about anything.) I guess, the relationship he and I had...he made me want to be enough of a little girl that we could go to Daddy/Daughter dances and enough of an adult to sip wine and have intellectual conversations at the same time. I would never admit this to him, but I cared SO MUCH what he thought about everything. He kept it real. He listened to my poetry and didn't judge me for it, just listened. He was trying to win my mom's heart, but he managed to get a pretty good chunk of mine too, and goddammit, I don't give a fuck if it's somehow disloyal to my mom, sometimes I miss him so much it HURTS. If ever I believed in family, it was when he was the head of mine. He lies somewhere near the root of my belief in unconditional love, too. It feels so wrong to say this, but it's how I feel so here it goes: Losing him was like losing my dad all over again.
I want to be able to have dinner with him. I want him to know about my JP topic, and I'd be more comfortable talking to him if I started dating than either of my actual parents. It's not fair that my mom wanting him out of her life meant taking him out of mine too. It's just not fair.

But you know, I still firmly disagree with the guest lecturer about one thing, and my belief about this is unwavering. She said children of fragile families would be better off with no transitions, even if they were into better relationships. That's just plain untrue. Even knowing how much it would hurt to finally understand what a father-daughter relationship is supposed to be and then lose it, I'd do it all again for the sake of the memories. I'd do it all again for the pure joy I got from running into him at Walmart over the summer, or for the shared secret joy my sister and I got from texting him to wish him a Merry Christmas.


I really do want to meet him for dinner or (in a few months) drinks or something and catch up. Maybe that's stabbing my mom in the back, but hey, I never wanted to break up with him. Don't I get some choice in who stays in my life?