Hey again, steemitizens!
This post is very personal, and possibly a little controversial. I'd appreciate you keeping the comments civil, and carefully crafted. My choice to share my personal life, does not mean you necessarily should feel compelled to be explicit about the same. Choose wisely, my friends.
Now, with that laid out, let me get to the point I'm here to make.
This one is for the dads whose children have been taken, through lost cause divorce custody battles, or estranged by pregnant exes who ran off with another man, or who never knew that girl from the beach last summer had your baby and never let you know until the kid showed up at 17 years old on their own.
Or, and my heart is destroyed and I'm tearing up as I type this ... taken from them by unknown or worse, and this too has happened to me - a known, but incredibly unwanted and undesired abortion. You love that girl so much! And you'll be so happy having a family with her. But her dad is a country Baptist preacher. He cannot find out, and she panics. She has a plan now, and you don't even know. You can't stop her. You're home on Christmas break from college and she goes behind your back, despite the promise to marry her and leave school for the military to support them. And her agreement to that, leaving you hopeful and optimistic. Until you get that phone call. That horrible, devastating phone call. And she eventually makes you drop out of college and she marries a guy you once called a dorm mate and friend.
The scenarios are often different, but the impact is that you dads with distance from your kids, with no communication with your kids are sitting here right now on US Holiday "Father's Day", watching all media and the internet around you focus on ubiquitous khaki panted, polo shirt wearing Dad's in BBQ aprons, beaming down at little Suzy, on the perfectly green lawn, squirting mustard on her sundress in a little floppy hat while big brother Jesse is squirting the dog with a super-soaker behind her.
This post is for those dads like me. But we won't mind if the rest of who aren't dads like us read it too. Feel free. We're the ones who are trapped. Not you.
We are the ones, sitting alone at their computer writing a blog like this on Father's Day. Currently 80F and sunny outside without a cloud in the sky, and yet still indoors in the man cave, which is really just a bachelor style shit hole house.
Yeah. Us dads.
I got married in 1992 because my GF was pregnant. We were together for 13 years and our daughter was 12 when I got divorced because my wife lift me for a younger man. Nearly half our own age, and closer in years to my childs age than to her age. Not by much, but enough to make it well, 'completely fucked up' where the words I've always tended to use.
Thrust into the world with a southern US, female-centric, "dads cant raise daughters" style traditional woman judge in a room full of women attorneys and court staff, and up against a lying, cheating ex-wife. With no solid reasoning for it whatsoever, I was given one day a month of restricted access to my own child.
I lost it all. This spiritually killed me and ruined me mentally, financially, physically, and morally. A former baptist church youth leader and boy scout, I spent the next decade, in trouble with the law, on drugs, in hospitals ill from stress and hard living, working a fully functional tech career at the same time, but never really advancing, living too high on the hog, at the beach! in the cool cities! Moving around, blowing my money and getting further and further from my daughter. Yes, my now 25 year old daughter and I reached a point where we see each other not even once a month, but at best once a year, and some years have been missed.
Let that sink in.
Because a woman wanted a little boy to soothe her self esteem issues, after 13 years she destroys my life and takes my child with lies, leaving me bankrupt and adrift in the process.
NOW LETS BE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR HERE!
Despite the tone taken above, I am no longer bitter and angry.
It's been 15 years now of this. I'm not over it, but I'm used to it. Jaded, is the word that comes to mind. And I bet you are too.
I am settled into owning a company that is pretty stable, own 17 acres of lovely mountain land and an off-grid, tiny cabin situation on solar and spring water, and a two story office building in town. I'm comfortable.
And I never see my kid. She lives 5 hours away. But once a month, became once every couple, then few, then twice a year for reunion and holiday weekends, then once a year then none. No calls, not much messaging except "merry christmas, love you, merry christmas back, love you back" and silence.
Today is an American holiday, called "Father's Day". The name pretty much explain's itself to folks in other countries that don't have this day in their holiday calendar, I guess.
So, today, I sent her this.
And when I got done writing it. I realized, I was probably better off if I had only sent one line.
"We have to fix this. I love you"
Because that's all I was trying to say!
And then I read it again. And I realized. It's not just she and me. It's us.
*Guys. Listen. We have to fix this. *
This is all wrong.
These are our children!
Our flesh and blood!!!
Yes, there are definitely dead beat dads.
There are also derelict deadbeat MOMS! So WTF, right?
Guys. I feel your anger.
Women?
Well...
But we need to work across the aisle ladies and gentlemen.
Because we need to fix this.
Because I love you.
And with that, this post is finished.
