As relationships grow, evolve, and change, they can go through many changes. I remember when we decided that we were ready to expand our family, and that we wanted to have children. We were able to get pregnant very easily, and she had a very easy pregnancy. Creed wrote a song called “With Arms Wide Open” on their Human Clay album that accurately tells of the emotions a father goes through when learning that his partner is pregnant, and he is going to become a father.

With lyrics including:

“Well, I just heard the news today
It seems my life is going to change”…

“Well, I don’t know if I’m ready
To be the man I have to be”…

“I’ll show you love, I’ll show you everything”

It speaks to the complete life altering event that is taking place. I have told people many times, that being a father is harder than I ever imagined it would be, but also more rewarding than I ever dreamed it could be. My kids come first. Everything I do, I try to keep a basic thought in the forefront of my mind, and that is the question of what is in my children’s best interest. I allowed myself to suffer abuse and torment, because I thought that staying with their mother, was what was best for them.

Eventually I realized that staying with their mother, was only best for the kids, if their mother and I were happy. The constant fighting, was more damaging to the kids, than their mother and I separating. My daughter’s stress and anxiety manifested as Functional Abdominal Pain, and that constant stomach pain stopped her from attending school for almost three years. This lack of attendance was supported by her mother, and my concerns and objections were ignored. Her brother’s stress and anxiety manifested as anger, and rage. He developed a mistrust and hatred of women. I got phone calls from the school because of how he would disrespect the teacher, or the mother’s volunteering during field trips. When I started to see signs in the next youngest, of stress and anxiety, I knew that I had failed as a father and as a parent. Coupled with some other issues in my life, I decided that what was best for everyone, is if I was no longer around, and I attempted suicide.

My attempt was unsuccessful, but nobody even noticed that I had tried, which reinforced to me that nobody would miss me when I was gone, so I tried again. Again I was unsuccessful. I tried talking to my wife, and all she did was berate me for being such a selfish piece of shit, which again reinforced my belief that the world would be better without me in it. Fortunately, as my life was crumbling around me, I called my sister, essentially to say goodbye. She begged me to come live with her, but I did not want to be a burden on her, and I wanted to be able to say goodbye to my kids, so I made up a reason and declined. My sister knew that my next suicide attempt was only a few days away, and that I had a plan for attempt three, that would likely work, so she worked as fast as she could to come to my rescue.

My sister made arrangements with some friends, both hers and mine, and then tricked my wife into being out of the house for the day. She then descended upon the house, and moved me out of the master bedroom, into the baby’s room, and moved the baby into the master bedroom. She put a key lock on my new bedroom door, and made me promise that I would not make any attempt to kill myself for at least another week. She then everyone, except my mother and my best friend, off to a friend’s house, so that the remaining three of us could confront my wife upon her return home.

That confrontation went about as well as I expected. To their faces, my wife assured my mother and my friend of how concerned she was about me, and how she had not realized how serious the situation with my mental health had become. She said all the right things, and made all of the right promises. And she is such a gifted liar, that I could see the calm reassurance spreading over my mother and my friend’s faces as they believed that perhaps things would be okay.

Then my wife asked if she could have a private conversation with me. Believing that things would be okay, my mother and my friend agreed, so my wife and I went to a different room, where my wife proceeded to verbally tear me apart for embarrassing her. I took the verbal abuse, as I was fairly used to it, and we came back into the room. One look at the expressions on my mother and friend’s faces and I knew that they had heard everything she had just said to me, and it was at that moment that I finally realized that I am not a piece of worthless shit, but perhaps, just perhaps, I might have value.

I realized that as painful as it would be for the kids, the only way any of us could start to heal, was to “rip off the bandage” and declare the marriage over. P!nk’s song “Family Portrait” from her Missundaztood album tells the story of the family breaking up, with the parents’ brutal fighting, from the perspective of the child.

With lyrics including:

“It ain’t easy growing up in World War III” …

“In our family portrait
We look pretty happy
Let’s play pretend, let’s act like it comes naturally”

The lyrics are gut-wrenching. Especially knowing that I was part of doing that very thing to my own children. The very people that I had promised myself that I would do anything to protect, I was actively hurting. The realization that my decision to stay together “for the kids” was the very thing that was hurting the kids, very nearly sent me to attempt number three, even though I had promised my sister that I would not.

When we choose an action, we choose all the consequences that go with that action. I have made a lot of bad choices, and taken a lot of bad actions during my life, and I get to live with that. Knowing some of the pain that I have caused my children, is some of the hardest issues with which I get to live.

Over the years, my kids have come to me with some hard questions, and I have tried to respond to those questions honestly, whilst trying to remember that they will have to understand and live with the answers. When my son, who was maybe seven at the time, asked me “why does mommy love grandma more than she loves me?” and before I could even start to respond, his nine year old sister followed up with “yeah, why is that?”¹, it was quite the gut-punch. I had known for years where everyone landed on their mother’s importance hierarchy, with her mother being at the top of the list, the four kids were roughly tied for second place, and I ranked after the kids, and was considered more of an interchangeable part. She wanted someone in the role of husband and father, but did not really care whether that someone was me. But trying to find the words to explain to a couple of kids that their mother loves them, and while it might appear that their grandmother was more important, they were mistaken in their impression was extremely challenging, especially when I knew that what I was telling them was a complete lie. They were completely correct, their mother really did care more about their grandmother than she did about them.

Since then, the questions that they have come to me with have gotten harder, as they are getting older and understanding more. Lately, that seven year old, who is by now a teenager, and I have been discussing the Trolley Problem, and how so much of life can wind up being about trying to pick the least objectionable option. When he came to me a couple of weeks ago, asking ‘Why don’t you just settle with Mommy? Why are you taking her to court?”¹, even though the words were coming out of his mouth, I knew who was asking me the question. Trying to find the right words to explain things to him, in a way that he can understand, but also knowing that everything will likely be repeated, the best he can remember, back to his mother. I tried to explain to him, that I have tried settling with his mother, and that she ignores the terms of the settlements, every chance she gets, and that the only way I can make the terms stick, is if they are legally binding. I got to revisit this very issue, about two weeks later, when I discovered that his mother, according to his younger brother, regularly comes to visit the younger two children at school, on my parenting days, which is in direct violation to the terms of a settlement we reached a year ago.

Every time that one of my kids comes to me with a question, I know that they are struggling with an issue of their own, and regardless of how big or small the issue might appear to me, the issue is big to them. I have so many emotional and psychological issues of my own, that I see the same issues in my kids. Whether these issues are truly there, or whether I am projecting my fears onto normal childhood issues causes me to spiral. Is my child a cry-baby who needs to grow up, or is it signs of C-PTSD?

Slowly I have been working on finding myself again. My favourite empowerment song is “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten from her album Fight Song. Rachel wrote the song about her struggle in the music industry, and her personal search for a decision whether to continue to struggle or whether to give up and try a different path. Multiple lyrics ring out to me:

“Starting right now I’ll be strong” …

“And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me” …

“Losing friends and I’m chasing sleep”

Doing what I believed to be the right thing, even though it cost me money, time, friends, and almost everything else, but I’m continuing down a path, with an end goal even I cannot see.

I created a family, and then I got to rip that family apart, because I knew that as brutal as it was, it what was best for the children. Every day remains a struggle, but I have the love and support of the people that truly care about me. One of the hardest parts was the discovery of which of my friends, truly were my friends. The people that will stand beside me through thick and thin. There have been some incredibly hard and painful lessons along the way, But I keep fighting.

¹ I do not remember the exact phrasing, but this is as close as I can recall