What Your Childhood Is Like When Your Dad Is in Prison

This article originally appeared on VICE Spain

I was born 19 years ago, just a couple of weeks after my mother was released from prison. My father wasn't at the hospital with her when she gave birth, because he was still incarcerated. When I was a few months old, my mother took me to meet him for the first time. He was doing his time in a high security prison in Cádiz, a city in southwestern Spain. My mum later told me that even that first time, he didn't pay me much attention. He didn't ask how I was doing or what I was like – his main concern was whether she had managed to smuggle something into the prison that he could sell. There were miles between me and my dad, both literally – the prison was a 10-hour bus ride from our home – and emotionally.

I was born into the very definition of a dysfunctional family – I've never spent any time alone in a room with both of my parents. In fact, I don't think the total amount of hours I've spent together with my dad adds up to more than 24. Both my parents spent time in prison for drug trafficking – my mother was locked away for a total of eight years before I was born. They were in the same facility together and first met in the yard – they weren't allowed to be near each other, but managed to speak through notes. They got married in prison while my dad was still doing time there, a mere six months after they met.

As a toddler, I had no idea my life was shaped and determined by the effects of crime and drugs. But even before I understood what was going on, I could tell that my family wasn't normal. My neighbours, teachers and pretty much every adult I met treated me with pity. Everyone considered me that poor girl that was growing up among criminals. And it was impossible to hide how poor my mum and I were – we lived on the small allowance my mum received after she was released.

Although I could tell something wasn't quite right, I wasn't aware of our situation for years. Nobody explained to me what that place where my dad lived was, exactly. I never thought to ask why we had to travel so far to see him, why we had to go past guards, why we could only talk to him behind a large piece of glass, in a room filled with other people who were shouting just so their loved ones could hear them.

We visited fairly regularly at first. My mum hadn't yet filed for divorce and she felt obliged to encourage us to have some kind of relationship. Looking back, I don't think I should have been pressured to see my father that often, when I was so little – it was a lot to take in. And it didn't help my dad get closer to me, either. At one point when I was still a baby, he was released from prison – but he was re-arrested a few days later for another crime. In the few days he was out, he never spent any time with me.

I really only started asking questions when I was six years old. My mother was rather evasive at first, so I got angry and stopped talking to her for a few days. That worked – a few months later, in the summer, she took me to the beach in Huelva, a city about two hours west of Cádiz, and tried to explain where my father was. We were sat by the seafront and as I ate my ice cream, my mum stroked my head and said, "Your father is in prison". I nodded and carried on eating – I didn't really register what that meant and my mum was unable to explain to me the significance of the situation.

She made a few state-covered appointments with a psychologist for me, but that didn't prove very helpful either. When I'd ask my father's side of the family about him, they would just tell me that my dad was being treated for an illness in that prison.

As I slowly started to understand what my father being in prison meant, I felt shame. Prison, I noticed by registering other people's reactions to the word, was a horrible thing. So I made up thousands of different stories about his whereabouts to tell my peers – to some I said that he was fighting some war, to others, I said that he was dead.

That same year, my mother decided to cut off all communication with him. She realised that I was having a hard time with it all and that it would only get worse. I didn't write or receive any letters from him any more and we stopped visiting. She knew that this could mean he'd take legal action against her and they could take away her custody of me, but she still took the risk.

Two years after my mum made that decision, my dad successfully applied to be transferred to a prison closer to us. I would love to say that he did it because he really wanted to reconnect with his daughter, but the truth is that he wanted to be closer to his mother. She was paying his way in prison.

My mother was never told by the prison authorities that her husband was moved to a facility that was minutes from our house. The news came from my paternal grandmother, who in the meantime had become very abusive towards my mum. She didn't approve of the fact that my mum had found a new partner – and when my grandmother and I were alone together, she tried to manipulate my feelings against my mother. She often suggested that my mum's boyfriend was abusing me, hoping that I'd start to believe it myself. I never understood how she could stand behind someone like my dad so fiercely – someone who was more interested in being a criminal than being with his family.

About a year and a half after he moved closer to us, my father asked me to visit him. I was 9 at the time, so I remember that visit a lot more clearly. This time, my mum didn't come with me.

I went over that visit in my mind so often before it happened. I imagined how he would come in, we'd chat a bit about how I was doing, and he'd sincerely apologise for allowing us to become so estranged. That's not what happened. He did ask me how I was, but he said very little after that. I gave him some photos of me from summer camp and he said, "Your friends look older than you." When it was time to go, he said he loved me and that was it.

I spent months wondering why, if he had asked me to visit, he hadn't really said anything. I wondered why he hadn't taken the time to explain why he was in prison, why he hadn't shown any interest in me all those years. There were times I thought he might be embarrassed, that he just didn't know how to deal with the situation – but I decided that it was more likely he just didn't care about me.

Watch: 30 Days in Solitary Confinement

That was the last time I saw him. He hasn't asked for any more visits in the past ten years, and I've decided that it's not worth it for me to go through it all again. For a long time, I kept hoping that he'd explain it all to me one day and ask for forgiveness, but so far he has not.

As a child, I always thought that I was the problem – that I wasn't lovable enough for my dad to want to hang out with me. That feeling of guilt stayed with me throughout my whole childhood and well into adolescence. It has affected my relationships, my friendships and my ability to trust that the people I get close to won't just disappear.

Thankfully, my mother and her new partner provided stability for me throughout my childhood, and they kept me sane. It's hard sometimes, but I decided that I can't have my life be shaped by my dad's issues and mistakes. His life will not determine mine.