My childhood left me angry and afraid. My son is helping me find peace and joy.

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There is anger inside me that I thought would go away by now. I tried to drink it away. I tried to smoke it away. I even tried to pray it away.

It's still there. It's still yelling at me. It's still mocking me. Over the years I’ve managed to live with it without being totally controlled by it. 

But it’s always there. 

Being my father's son left me with a hole I tried to fill. Perhaps it was growing up the son of an addict. Or maybe it was just growing up without a father figure in general. But I’ve come to the realization that after a life of shrugging it away, I’m angry about it and always have been. 

I realize now, 46 years into life, that this anger has shaped the person I am and defined my relationship with men. Outside of my sainted grandfather, who is the reason my family is even in the United States, I’ve never really loved any other man. I don't trust them. 

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I think that’s why I told myself that I didn’t want children and would get into shouting matches with my mother about just how much I didn’t want to be a father. 

I told myself that I never really saw the need to have a child. That I didn’t believe it was something I wanted. Being a dad, I thought, just wasn’t for me. 

Being afraid to fail made me run from fatherhood 

Enter my beautiful son.

As I write this, Father’s Day is a couple of days away and I find myself trying to be honest about why I didn’t want to be a father before we decided to have a child. It’s a level of self-reflection I avoided with liquor and drugs as a kid, then with work as an adult. 

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I tried religion for a bit but found the Bible lacking the answers I sought, and the whole experience just really left me angrier. Watching my father lose his battle with addiction while praying to a God sent me further down a rabbit hole of despair. 

Why would I want to become something that represents the very thing that made me angry, hurt and alone? Why would I agree to become a father after mine failed me and I stumbled through life without any good examples of what fatherhood could be?

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But now, almost 10 years into fatherhood, I’m finally in a healthy mental space where I can examine why I fought back when friends and family suggested I become a father. Why was I so wrong and clouded about fatherhood? 

Turns out I was afraid. The anger I felt for my father and my childhood morphed into an overwhelming fear that I would fail my son and not be able to control a lifetime of rage. That I wasn’t equipped to raise a child or be the example this little person would need. That I would somehow become my father and ultimately fail my child. How do I help raise a person when I’m broken, knowing I might break him? 

What in the world could be worse than that? 

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But here we are, days away from Father’s Day, just enjoying our lives together. My son is upstairs with his mom playing a game on his iPad, and I can hear the shouts of joy because he’s doing so well. 

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They're the shouts my father missed. And though my mother tried, it was his absence during my joy that often made me feel the loneliest. Hearing my son now means he won't have that experience. And I get to tell myself that this is what I wanted and that being a father is, in fact, for me. 

Just a few minutes ago, he came out of his room to yell down the stairs that he scored more than 800 points twice in Crossy Road, a game where 800 points means you’re a bit of a badass. 

Later, we’re going to go to a bowling alley that's also filled with arcade games. He loves to see how many jackpots he can get for the prizes that are honestly marked too cheap for his mastery of those games. 

It hit me on a college visit with my son: He's leaving. He's ready. And I'm not.

This weekend we’re probably going to drive around Washington, D.C., order something from Uber Eats and play Minecraft while he laughs every time I die in the game. 

This summer we’re going to stress out over his return to the classroom, but we’re going to have as much fun as we can along the way. He has already requested a road trip. 

And I’m going to keep dealing with the loss of a father figure in a life that, before my son, was filled with darkness and muted rage. I'm going to accept that I don't have to continue a legacy of lost fathers. 

More important, I’m going to keep waking up and doing my best to be the father he needs despite my own faults and my own set of demons. All while trying like hell to be less angry. 

It’s what he deserves. It’s what I deserve.

Louie Villalobos is audience development editor at Paste BN Opinion. Follow him on Twitter: @louievillalobos