What I'm going to say here is my experience. What you or anyone else takes from it is up to you. I never give advice and no one should ever give advice that has a chance to seriously and severely affect another person's life. If you're going through something similar, you should be looking inside yourself and your heart for the answer. It's ok to ask for someone's experience, but if they haven't been where you are then they have no business telling you what you should do.
When my wife and I split up, I walked away with no where to go but I knew that staying there was not working. I lived in an extended stay hotel for 2 months. My kids came to see me twice. They were 3, 5 and 9 years old. I spent Christmas alone in that hotel room contemplating suicide. I wanted to be home with my family, to see my kids wake up Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought. I wanted to hold my wife and tell her I loved her, but it was too late for that. I was ashamed of myself. A man is not supposed to abandon his family like that. Hes their protector, it takes two parents to raise a child, no other man should be responsible for raising my children, my kids need their dad. All of that was going through my head. I was ashamed, I felt guilty, I was heartbroken, I was mad, I was sad, I wanted to die but I didn't want my kids to hurt.
I was depressed and didn't know it. I had been for a long time. I was 4 years sober and didn't realize that there are several things, other illnesses, underlying causes that can lead to substance abuse. Addiction is a symptom. All I wanted to do was lay in bed. I didn't want to see anyone, I didn't want anyone to see me. For someone who has never been there, they won't understand but it's not as easy as just making a decision to get up. You get to a point where you are just surviving and even that becomes hard.
The more time that went by the worse things got. My wife would call and tell me what a piece of shit I was. How I was hurting my kids. She wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know but I couldn't do anything about it. I would sit there on that bed crying, thinking about what I was doing to my kids, with a gun to my head hoping that day was the day I had the balls to pull the trigger.
After almost 3 months my phone rang. It was my wife telling me I needed to come get the kids. I thought she meant for the night or something but she said no, I needed to come get them to come live with me. She said she couldn't take care of them and that they would be better with me. I didn't know why she did that at the time and I don't know why I did what I did, but I got up walked out of that hotel, went and rented a 2 bedroom apartment, put furniture in it, then went and got my kids.
I was lost, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, I had a 3 year old son and 5 & 9 year old daughters. I didn't know anything about taking care of kids. Their mother did all of that while I worked. Now here I am, taking 2 kids and dropping them off at school. I find a daycare for my son, I owned a construction business that was growing and consuming more of my time everyday, then picking kids up, feeding them, homework, baths, bed, more work, then do it all over again the next day still fighting depression and struggling to stay sober.
I don't know how I managed to do it, I finally saw a doctor about the depression, got moved into a house, hired people to run the business during that first year and never really gave it much thought until somebody came up to me one day in the grocery store and said to me that it was a wonderful thing and what a great person I was for stepping up and getting those kids, taking care of them the way I did. I smiled and said thank you but I really wanted to cuss them. First, they are my kids, I didn't adopt them from an orphanage. I didn't have a choice. When she called and said to come get them it didn't occur to me that I had a choice. If I had of known that at the time I might not have went to get them, but I didn't have a choice. I didn't do anything wonderful or anything that millions of single moms and single dad's weren't doing everyday. There was nothing special about me. In fact, I was the one rescued. Those kids, my kids, saved me. I would have eventually killed myself if that wouldn't have happened.
The second thing about them saying that, was they were making it out like their mother had just abandoned them or didn't want them anymore. What I didn't know on day one and what these people didn't know was that their mother had found out she had cancer. She knew she didn't have long, she knew the treatments were going to make her sick where she couldn't take care of the kids and she didn't want them to see her dying this slow miserable death. She loved her kids and she was a great mother. What she did, she did for them. Making the decision to pick up that phone and call me to come get them was probably the hardest decision she ever made and at the same time the easiest.
That was 17 years ago and we've been through some ups and downs. The hardest thing I've ever had to go through was hearing my son laying in bed crying one night. He was 7 years old and I went into his room and asked him what was wrong, I thought he was having a bad dream or something. He looked up at me with tears running down his face and said daddy don't let momma die, I don't want her to. I wouldn't wish that moment on my worst enemy. To know my child is hurting like that and looking to me to fix it and knowing there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it ripped me apart at the soul. If I could have traded places with her I would have. If I knew that it would bring her back and she was back in their life, I would trade places with her today.
Here's the thing, people will come to you and say things. People will give you advice. I never asked Jodi for a dime of child support. I didn't need it and she couldn't pay it. That was not something she needed to worry about but people would still come to me and ask me if she was paying anything or if she ever saw the kids. She saw them every chance she got and she fought through chemo and being too sick to open her mouth to talk for nearly 9 years until that shit consumed every part of her body and she couldn't hold on any longer even though in the beginning the doctors told her she wouldn't make it 6 months. She held on for her kids, to give them as much time as she could. What she gave them, what she gave me was worth more than what any judge could have ordered her to pay.
What you are going through in life is between you and those involved. Nobody else knows what any of you are going through. Every situation is different. There's a reason people do what they are doing and you knowing them better than anyone probably know why. I doubt it's intentional or meant out of spite or meanness. Everyone struggling with something wants something different than what they are getting from life.
The same for us. I'm sure we could be doing some things different but right now we are doing what we think is right for us.
My wife and I didn't get back together. We knew it wouldn't work, even if she wouldn't have had cancer, we just couldn't be together. That didn't mean that we didn't love one another. I doubt I'll ever love anyone the way I loved her and I know she felt the same about me. She quit being resentful towards me, she forgave me for some things I did and she quit telling me what a piece of shit I was because she didn't really believe that. What she felt was hurt, not anger. She wanted to hurt me like I hurt her. It was only after we let all of that go, we forgave one another, we accepted we had these kids together and now it was about them, not just about me and her. It took something major in her life to get her to pick up that phone and call me even though it was the last thing she wanted to do and it took her not giving me that choice whether to get them or not, to get all of us to where we are today. Had she not, who knows, maybe neither one of us would be here today.
Don't ever assume you know what someone else is going through or what demons they are fighting unless you've walked in their shoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment