It doesn’t escape me that tomorrow is Father’s Day. For many, it’s a celebration. For some, it’s complicated. And for a more rare few, it’s a quiet, empty ache.

If you’re like me, you’re somewhere in the middle.

I’ve not seen my father in person in 5 or 6 years. Not so much because of a falling out, though that definitely happened, but more because of distance, and choice. I’ve not gone to visit him and he’s not come to visit me. And that is, weird. I don’t know what to think (or feel) about that. I’m conflicted.

I don’t know if I miss him as much as I miss what I should have had. A role model. A mature human. Someone to follow. I don’t blame him… or at least I understand the limited cards he was dealt as a child and young man. And I have tremendous empathy for him. He’s just as broken (or even more so) than I was.

But it still feels unfair.

I get it. First world problems. And there are people out there who have walked through so much worse. But it’s still the reality I face. And if I’m honest, conflicted doesn’t seem big enough. It doesn’t. It seems… incomplete, inadequate, too small, to describe how I feel about all of this.

On the one hand, I’m a grown adult. I’m successful at what I do. I’m happily married.

On the other, I’m a scared 10 year old who simply wishes his dad never left and that his parents never split.

I had dinner with a few buddies yesterday. And we ate and conversation flowed, we opened up and shared how none of us come from families that are remotely functional. And as we talked, I was struck by two feelings. The first, how grateful I am to have friendships like this. The second, how I felt when they talked about raising their children.

It struck me then that in it within just a few short days their wives would be celebrating them. Their kids would give them handmade cards. Or pasta-art. Or something else covered in glue and glitter and beautiful mess. Something tangible that says they’re fathers. And they’re doing a good job. Something they’d get to hang on their fridge. Or stick in their bible. A memory of a moment in their journey of fatherhood that they could keep for the rest of their lives.

Did I romanticize it? I did. But did it prick the “I’m totally ok” facade? Yes, it did.

Maybe the word isn’t conflicted. Maybe it’s grief.

Not over what I lost — but over what never was.