I found my biological father

Having the past I do, my childhood and adulthood with drugs and alcohol and all the behavior gives me a pretty unique life perspective.   I know I am not alone in this realm.    People in long term recovery have life experiences that are pretty interesting to say the least.   With all of that, and now being in long term recovery, we are able to get through things that some would see as being insurmountable.   Resilience for those in recovery is something that is usually pretty high.  The ability to get through things life throws at us is something that we deal with like most others, but, internally, we have a different way of coping.   Some, not all, have this innate ability to use challenges as ways of seeing progress in our lives.   For myself, having earned an undergraduate and graduate degree, this was one of those areas.   Every quarter I would struggle like anyone else.   Classes would be hard, papers to write would be difficult, and like many, working and going to school was a challenge.  Yet, I was able to use my crazy past as a positive tool to keep pushing forward.  Saying to myself  "look at all you have been through....this is nothing, keep moving forward".   Resiliency is something that is a great asset that many in recovery have, and can use to their advantage.  

I am going to give a little history on my childhood.  I am the youngest of four.  The oldest, Bob, is six years older than I am.   I have two sisters, Tina and Cheri, in between.   Mom was a single mom a lot of the time we were young.   A single mom raising four kids in the late 60's, 70's, and into the early 80's.    I was the last one to leave the home at the age of 15 in 1983-4.   We never had much.

None, I say again, none, of our fathers paid child support or gave any emotional support along the way.   There were short periods where Mom was with Jerry, Bob's biological father.  It was never good.  He was a drinker and physically and emotionally abusive to mom.  We later found out, through Tina and Cheri opening up, that he had sexually abused them.   Jerry was out of the picture for good when I was really young, probably 6-7.  My real father, Danny Douglas, was equally of no use to our family.   I was a baby when Mom ran from him, literally.   He held a gun to my mom's head.   Physically and emotionally abusive to Mom, and just like Jerry, my brother opened up and we learned he had sexually abused him when he was young.

Mom always desired to have a family.   Her, a good man, and us kids.  With this desire we had different men in and out of our home when we were young.   I don't remember all of them, but a few stick out.  There was a guy in Portland for a bit.   I remember him having an el camino and taking us to ice cream...and I think he was a cop.  I was really young then.   There was Jerry of course, never a good scene.  Mom gave him the boot for good when we lived in Ocean Shores, I was probably eight or so by this time.  Then there was Johnny.   I think I wrote about him in one of the blogs earlier in the month.  Johnny, to me, was amazing.   I became close to him, so close, that I took his last name.    I was David Revell in 7th-8th grade.  He was a good man taken to soon.  Johnny died of cancer at the age of 41-42.

Prior to Revell I carried the Emmerson last name,  I was told for years that Jerry was my real father.  I didn't know any better being a kid, so, I believed it.  It was when I went to sign up for the military that the Douglas last name came into play.  Due to it being on my birth certificate, it was my legal last name.   I started using the Douglas last name when I was 17.    I had zero memory of Danny Douglas.  I only had the stories told by my family members.

It was in early recovery that I decided to seek out this man, Danny Douglas.   I wanted to know, for myself, if he was my real father.  I wanted to know for myself if I was his blood.   This was in 1997ish.   The internet was just becoming a thing.  I did a search.  It didn't take long before names popped up.  There was a Danny Joe Douglas.......in Bremerton, WA.    Literally right next door to the county I had been living in almost my entire life.   There was a phone number.  I called it.  He answered.   I asked......are you Danny Douglas....yes was the answer.   Do you have a son named David Douglas?  A long pause.....yes.     Wholly shit!    Literally, the very first one I called was him.

I had grown up without a Dad.   We had what I call, "dads of the week".   Men here and there, and most of them were shit.  No good for anything close to resembling a dad.   The ONE man that I became close to, Johnny Revell, well, he died way to early.  I was angry.   Now, I get a "yes" answer from a man who is living less than 50 miles away from his son all these years???

We talked, I let it all out.  I was angry.   Why?  Why did he never try to keep in contact?  Why didn't he pay child support to mom?  How could he live so close but never keep in touch?   There were many questions.  In his credit, he did listen.  He was willing to accept that he screwed up.   I was at a point in my life, with a year or so in recovery, that I was willing to listen.    We set a date to meet.

I still had the question inside?  IS he my real father?  I had to see him.   I was working when he walked in.  I knew, the second I saw him, who my real father was.  I had my answer in that very second.  Much like Tyler looks a lot like me, and Anthony, Tyler's son, the same, Danny and I looked a lot alike!  He showed up too.....this was good in his favor.  

We met, talked, and got to know each other a bit.   Eerily familiar type stuff that proved that we were blood.   We had the same interests, loved the same things, he was without a doubt my real father.  For the next several years, until his passing, we would have an off and on relationship.   I would say we became friends.   We both loved computers and had self taught ourselves the trade from the early 90's to that period.  We both loved dogs.   We both had a desire, at some level, to have a relationship.   It worked for a while.  There were periods when I would need to take a break and not talk to him.  I, to this very day, do not accept that he was not in my life.    I, to this day, do not accept that he didn't help my mother financially and with being a father to me and my sister along the way.  

Being a father myself, and knowing the trials and tribulations of being split from Tyler's Mom, and all of the problems we had raising Tyler as coparents, I would never have left Tyler because it was to hard.   Sure, there were times, dealing with some of the chaos, that I might have thought it would be easier, but I never acted on those thoughts.  Tyler deserved his dad in his life.  I had a responsibility to be his father.  Danny, from when I found him, at the age of 30-31, until his death a few years back, he tried then.   He kept in contact and tried.   I give him that credit.  But, for how he treated my mother and brother, that shit never goes away.

Finding Danny Douglas was helpful overall.  I needed to do that for myself.   It helped me in ways I didn't even know.   Through all of this I was in counseling....thank god!   It was weird, being 30-31 years old, and finding your dad.   But, it is what it is, and was what it was.

It was in 2000 that I got the call from Cyndi.  The call that would rock my world!  I had been in recovery for over four years by this point.   Had a career at Fred Meyer, me and Stephanie were together, and I was living my life.   I was involved with Tyler a lot.  I was a frequent volunteer at his school, and had him every other weekend and more.   Steph had a son, Nick, who Tyler got along with well and we always tried to coordinate weekend so they could see each other.    We were living in downtown Puyallup at the time.   Life wasn't perfect, but, we were giving it our best.   Then the call came from Cyndi.......

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