The First Man Who Broke My Heart
Backpacking, teenagers, fathers, and racism. // a story
I had one serious boyfriend in high school. He was black, and we stayed together for 2 years. We met at our school in South Carolina, which was close to 50/50 racially, due to long-held desegregation policies in our school district.
Our relationship incited weird questions and comments, mostly from black kids, mind you. I think the white kids got the feeling early on that if they said something offensive around me, I might bite their head off. (They were right, and I often did.) When I found myself sitting at lunch tables to meet the friends of my boyfriend, they seized the moment when he walked to the bathroom:
"So, you're a snow bunny huh?"
"Do you only date black guys?"
"How big is it?"
"Once you go black, you never go back."
At the time I thought it was weird, but amusing how much people cared that we were together. I didn't understand "fetishization" back then. We learned in school how hard people fought for us to be able to freely mingle like this. I didn't feel weird; they were the weird ones. I just happened to be born in a place surrounded by them.
It wasn't as amusing when it came to the faculty of the school. One teacher and an assistant principal seemed hell-bent on breaking us up, because I was an honor roll student, and he had an old disciplinary record. It was VERY weird to get unsolicited relationship advice from someone whose job was teaching me history. She even stopped me in the hallway a few times just to tell me things like:
"He's a bad influence."
"You're too good for him."
"He's gonna hold you back."
The assistant principal was a loud dickhead. There was one day when we were both waiting for our ride following an afterschool club. Our parents were late. The assistant principal saw us hanging out and waiting, and he decided to come yelling at us and send my boyfriend walking home, even though he was a kid just like I was. Once my boyfriend was gone, the principal gave me another lecture about how I could do so much better, and my boyfriend was wasting my time and holding me back. I turned off my brain and let the words wash over me.
They had it all wrong. My boyfriend knew that college was important to me, and we made an agreement in the very beginning of our relationship that if we did not graduate together, we would not stay together. He worked so hard to meet that expectation that he was even on the honor roll too some years. He was good to me during that time, and he was emotionally supportive. They didn't need to know our business, but they made a point to constantly remind me how much they doubted him, in spite of him turning his life around.
They saw him through one lens: troublemaker. They would always see him as that no matter what he did. It was not his character. It was not his actions. It was his dark skin and their bias. I told anyone who would listen that racists could suck my dick.
In my teen years, my parents decided to turn the dining room into a room for us to use our electronics. We each had our own desk, and mine was sat next to my father's.
I mostly resented being next to him. My dad was not a kind man. He could be sadistic when he wanted to be. He was either loud and obnoxious, angry and violent, or he was quiet and ignoring you. I preferred when he was quiet. The less engagement, the better.
My desire to know my father waxed and waned during my childhood. At 15 years old, I happened to be in a waxing phase. My dad had been hiking since my childhood, and he took the family with him a few times, but now he found an online group that backpacked together, and he was excited about it. I don't remember if it was my suggestion or his, but after attending a seminar his online group organized, I was backpacking with him regularly.
I made a few errors my first trip - forgot my spoon, and forgot my sunscreen. My dad didn't let me live that down, even though the blisters on my shoulders were enough to convince me to never let that happen again. I wanted to impress my dad. I wanted to be perfect for him, since that's what he expected. Even miles-deep in the forest, with gentle streams sparkling nearby, and all of our food slung in bear bags in the trees; I felt like I was walking on eggshells, trying my best to do the right thing and never show fear.
Even though I joined the trips to get closer to my father, the beauty of nature is what kept me coming back. There was nothing like it in the rest of my life. Once you got far enough on the trail, there was no going back. You only had what you could carry, and you had to make it last until you made it to the other side. If you got tired, if you wanted to leave, if you wanted to give up or take a day off, that's too damn bad. The only way out of this is to walk. And walk I did. We would hike between 5 and 10 miles every day, uphill or downhill, rain or shine.
I would come back sore after every trip, but this became a feeling I looked forward to as well. I was in awe of what my body could accomplish. "I've climbed mountains!" I knew I was putting my body to the test, but it didn't feel like exercise when I was out on the trail. I was constantly distracted by the beauty around me - the animals, the trees, the rocks, wind, sun, and sky - plus the quiet and constant motion gave me the perfect space to explore my thoughts.
My father and I backpacked together regularly for a couple years, 2 or 3 times a season. I marked our trips on the calendar, and I got excited for them.
I actually started feeling content in my father's company. He seemed calmer more often than I'd ever seen him before. I was excited to get closer to my dad, something I didn't think was possible before I made myself take on his hobbies. My heart was opening up, and I was surprised that my feelings of resentment were shifting.
One sentence changed everything.
I heard it from my mom, not from him directly. My friends, boyfriend and I must have gone somewhere one night while my dad was in a pissy mood. When I got home, he was gone, and she told me he had shouted "Why can't she just date within her own race?!" before storming out.
I asked her why he said that. "That was all he said. I don't know." She looked just as shocked as I was. She liked my boyfriend, and she thought she and my dad were both "colorblind". My boyfriend thought my dad liked him too, and he thought he was becoming a part of our family.
My dad isn't someone you can have a reasonable conversation with. He doesn't want to be questioned, and if he feels criticized, he will lie and find a way to turn it on you. I felt confident, at 17, that there was no point in talking to my dad about what he said. Even though I never heard something so explicit from him before, I immediately believed it.
I was not my own person. Who or what made me happy and gave me a sense of belonging was irrelevant to him. I was supposed to be an extension of my father's values, nothing more, nothing less.
Just like the white kids at school, he wouldn't dare say something so clearly hateful within my presence. He knew it would make me despise him, and he was right. I have never been able to look at him the same way again.
We had one last trail to backpack, the second half of Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, and I wanted to get it done. I remember being particularly quiet during that trip; I was escaping with my thoughts rather than connecting with my father anymore. I don't know if he noticed, but I still managed to enjoy myself.
There was a point on the second day when I actually got lost from the group for about 2 hours. It was a rainy summer, and I came to a crossroads: uphill through trees, or downhill through mud. I was told to bring sandals just for this occasion, so I happily chose the mud. The mud was so soft that I even took off my shoes and went barefoot. I walked slow, enjoying the sliminess between my toes, and sang Hamilton songs to myself. I thought it was weird nobody had caught up to me yet, but I was having a grand ole time.
I reached a spot with cell reception and started getting calls. I took a wrong turn, and Dad said they'd send someone back down the trail to meet me. My dad was mad that I had held us back time-wise, but for once, I paid his anger no mind. I was having fun.
That trip ended like they all did - our whole hiking group sat at a diner or local restaurant before we went our separate ways. I liked the people we hiked with. They were good people, wise in many ways that I wasn’t, and I learned a lot from them. But that would be my last trip with them, because I didn't want to get any closer to my father. I was done.
I haven't gone backpacking since then. I miss it.
I began to avoid talking to my father at home. When he told me about new backpacking trips, I made excuses for why I couldn't go - I was busy with schoolwork, or I already had plans with friends. My dad must have noticed how quickly I turned cold towards him. He probably didn't know why, but he tried to bridge the gap, in his own way.
He started watching police brutality videos next to me.
I remember him watching COPS from the time I was a little kid, but this was different. I was politically motivated as a teenager, and I caught up on news nearly every day. This was when the Black Lives Matter movement was gaining traction in the 2010s. It got to a point when he would find out about the latest viral police shooting of an unarmed black man before I did. I didn't like to watch the videos. They made me feel sick. He wouldn't even warn me before shoving his phone in my face. "Check this out!"
With every crack of a baton, or the popping of a gun, my dad would react gleefully, like he was watching an action movie. "BAM! Bullseye! That's what you get!"
He would laugh and try to get me in on whatever sick joke he had going on. He tried to convince me that it was justified, so it was okay to laugh at. Sometimes I was speechless, sometimes I ignored him, sometimes I argued, and sometimes I shouted at him and cried. He wouldn't stop. He would do this at least once a week. He liked to watch my reaction to seeing a black man's life be taken away.
I started bringing my computer to my room when my dad came home. Said it was easier to focus in there. It was, because I wasn't around his nasty ass.
I hadn't connected - didn't want to connect back then - that my father enjoyed watching videos of black men dying because I was dating a black boy. I knew he was racist, but looking back, I think he would have rather had my high school sweetheart be dead than be with me. He must have fantasized about it, maybe even when we would sneak out to smoke weed. "One of these days..."
It makes me sick to look back on it as an adult - in what world would this be okay? The answer is this one. There are plenty of people like my father who enjoy modern lynching. Some people's minds are changing, but we still live in that world. My father had some privilege, some money, and some power, and none of it was enough to distract him from getting off on the oppression and murder of minorities.
As much as I wanted to love my father at one time, he is hell-bent on being a person who I can only reflect his hatred back at him. It's what he deserves and it's all I can provide. So, we don't talk at all now.
When I was 19, the COVID pandemic demanded that college students return home to their families and isolate. I went home to collect my things, and then I packed two bags to go sleep on a friend's couch until I could go back to school. I never went back to live with my parents, and I never saw my father again.
A part of my heart aches for what could have been - if my dad had done some healing before having children, if he was able to put down his pride, if he was able to learn empathy - but these are all fantasies. I was not born into this world with a kind father figure, and that's just how it is. My father is a controlling, violent, racist bigot and he wants to die that way. So, I'll let him be.
I haven't spoken to my father in 4 years. I feel well. I feel peaceful. The future is brighter without him in it. He tried to hold me back, he tried to change me, he tried to make me think like him, but it didn't take. I am a free-willed person, and I always have been. He could never take that from me.
Because of him, I know that nobody can. Because of him, I know how strong I am in the face of opposition. Because of my father's ego, and his rage, and his hatred, I was prepared to be a fighter. And fight, I always will.
