Desperate For My Father's Attention

My name is India Porter and I am currently incarcerated at Women's Huron Valley Correctional facility. I’ve been incarcerated for 19 years on a 25-40 year sentence. I grew up in the inner city of Detroit. At one point of my life, I was an at-risk teen, and like statistics predicted I ended up in prison for a violent crime. I hate to say it, but I became a product of my environment.

Growing up, all I wanted to be was a daddy's girl. My dad was involved heavily in the streets. In my pre-teen and teenage years, I made up my mind to follow in his footsteps. I remember being with my drug dealing boyfriend in drug houses selling dope. I was proud I could go back and tell my dad that I ran into people who knew him. I was hoping he would see how heavy I was in the street life, and that he’d be proud of me in some toxic, distorted way. I was just desperate for his attention, and since this was his world, I wanted to be a part of it any way I could.

My dad was the first man to break my heart. I’ll never forget the day, although I’ve tried to stuff it into oblivion. At 13 years old, when I lived with him, I was in the kitchen cooking hamburgers for us and his friends. Him and his friend was in the spare bedroom with the door wide open. I saw him load up his crack pipe and put the flame to the tip. It made me uncomfortable. I fixed my attention on the hamburgers I was flipping in the skillet. The heat inside of my heart was hot like the flames on the stove, burning me to my core as all the love, respect and admiration I had for my daddy went up in smoke like the crack in his pipe. He even insinuated that I would smoke crack one day like him. Those words made my love for him turn ice cold. Is that how he saw me? I thought he would see me as his princess. Something broke inside of me that day when my dad spoke those awful words over me. He taught me that men could not be trusted. If my own daddy looked at me like that, then other guys would think even less of me.

So, my long line of dysfunctional relationships with men began. I was a girl with daddy issues and it affected how I saw myself as a girl and how I showed up and didn't show up in relationships. It affected what I did and didn't do to get attention from men. And I had no idea what to expect in a relationship with a guy. I went through life cold, emotionally unavailable and looking at men like, "I have to get you before you get me."

I was 17 when I got the call from a stranger. The stranger didn't have to say a word because I felt it in the way the phone rang. He asked me if Phil was my father. He told me my father was living with him, and he unexpectedly passed away. He found a phone book in my father's pocket with my information in it. He said he felt he should call and let me know what happened. Before the stranger hung up, I asked him how my father died. He hesitated and said "a drug overdose." I was numb. I didn't know how to feel because I had not seen my father since the day he smoked crack in front of me. The funeral came, but I didn't go. I still hated him for what he did to me. I felt he didn't deserve my final respect.

The pressure of wanting my father’s love and acceptance continued to weigh on me. I didn’t know how to relieve the pressure…

Join founder and CEO of From Fatherless to Fearless on Wednesday, October 24, at 7:30pm for the Relieving the Pressure life class. You’ll gain tips and tools for alleviating life’s pressures.