Google Said I Suffered from a Syndrome

Be careful if you grew up without your father.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Curiosity had taken control of my fingers when I typed “fatherless daughter” into Google. After almost three decades of not caring or convincing myself, I did not care; I wanted to know what psychologists and researchers had to say about me. Even in my preparedness, I was startled by the immediate result. Google guessed what I was about to type next and predicted the word “syndrome.”

Syndrome?

The term sent an offensive jolt up my spine. It made the effects of my fatherlessness sound so dire. Like some debilitating disorder. Like, I was broken.

It’s not that I was unaware of my divergence compared to daughters with dads. I just didn’t think I’d missed out on anything especially meaningful. Differences never appeared overt or serious to me. Maybe that’s because I never paid any much attention.

Still, different does not equal damaged.

The nerve of those who’d fed this information to the internet. If I am burdened by a “condition,” when would my initial diagnosis have been?

When the man I called “Daddy” went away on Naval assignment long enough for me to lose faith in him? Or when my mother explained to me that he wasn’t my daddy at all? Perhaps it happened when I was eight years old, on the day I sat in front of a window waiting for my biological father to come and claim me.

Attempting to pinpoint the potential onset of an affliction, I hurried through my thoughts — doing 90 down the fast lane of a slow memory. It was only when I eased up on the gas, took my time, stopped and explored landmarks along my journey that I could see where it started to hurt. I could write into the wound.

And did, with:

I made sure to adorn my feet with the low-top, aerobic-style pink Reeboks my father bought me when we were last together. The sneakers were my proof that he loved me. Maybe he’d see me wearing them and remember.

With the contents of my young universe shaken loose, I searched for solid ground. That it might come in the form of this new daddy was all I could have hoped for. My waiting for him to arrive each time he promised, watching the street from a living room window was not weightless.

I suppose my exposure to Fatherless Daughter Syndrome occurred on many occasions. I can’t tell you the exact time and place I caught it or who gave it to me. Especially since I was always so careful. I wore a mask over my heart and washed its records. I sanitized my emotions unrecognizable. I took my medicine — watched my friends receive nurturing from their fathers without envy, and never asked mine to answer for his absence.

I felt fine.

Yet, if I’d been unknowingly infected, I wondered how the syndrome should be treated. How might I overcome such an ailment? To answer this question, I first needed to know the symptoms.

I took the bait and hit enter on the path Google had set before me.

Fatherless Daughter Syndrome, the search engine says with its first result, “is an emotional disorder that stems from issues with trust and lack of self-esteem that leads to a cycle of repeated dysfunctional decisions in relationships with men.” A few of the symptoms listed included promiscuity, an insatiable appetite for love, and an increased likelihood of teen pregnancy.

I comprehend the logic.

Studies support the idea of daughters seeking the attention they never received from their fathers in other men. Still, this feedback increased my level of offence because I am exhausted with females being analyzed primarily in terms of sexuality — measured mainly by our dealings with males.

There was little mention of how the personhood of a girl is influenced by the absence of her father. Not much information on how a history of abandonment may shape the way she shows up in any relationship. No prominent source spoke of the lost or never-formed sense of security, the erosion of belief, the aversion to extending grace for fear it might be abused, or the rigid impulse to exercise control we now have and how it all affects the way we move through the world.

Because I didn’t find much about women like me, whose self-esteem is no less intact than the average adult’s — Or girls who bucked the patriarchal promiscuity trend commonly pegged as the most prominent indicator of a fatherless daughter — I created space for us.

We don’t carry an insatiable appetite for male attention, craving an intimacy we haven’t known or can’t get enough of once tasted. It’s the opposite. We are starved. Starved for meaningful connection. Fasting from our own softness.

I wrote my memoir, Daddy’s Little Stranger because I don’t know which side suffers most from this alleged syndrome, the overindulgent or the malnourished. But maybe someday, they might talk more about ours.