Is it selfish that a part of me wishes my little girl would never grow up? My greatest worry with my child is that one day all of this going on around her will finally strike her as being odd or “not normal”. Every year I say the same thing, how lucky I am to have such a perfect daughter despite the set of circumstances we are forced to deal with. But as the years go by, she remains happy, loving, and seemingly oblivious to any sort of tension between her mother and I. Not that there has ever been anything confrontational, but the stories she tells me about her moms bad moods are always cause for concern. She always tells me them just like its a normal part of her day, same as her other siblings play habits or what she ate for lunch that day. She even took what happened with the miscarriage in stride. I can tell shes disappointed, but like everything else she experiences, she simply adapts and remains a smiling little child. Who’s comforting who? I wish she could teach me her secret to handling every day with a smile, because I could definitely learn a thing or two about holding up after she has to leave me for two weeks at a time.

I don’t believe in just telling someone to “get over it” when it comes to their personal problems and issues. We each handle things differently, especially so when it comes to sensitive issues. You will get over it when that burning sensation under your skin subsides and certain triggers don’t instantly make you wince. A decision I thought that I could live with forever, isn’t really a decision when at the time I lacked all of the information, right? “If I’d have known then what I know now, would I have chosen the same path”. I guess that is where I’m at right now. Its on my mind every single day of my life, it tortures me emotionally. This isn’t about forgiveness anymore, I guess its about finding acceptance. Because apparently there are things that are going to absolutely haunt me, with no end in sight.

After the night when I wake up
I’ll see what tomorrow brings
It always seems that the shittiest people pick the most inopportune times to enter your life. But let me digress. It has been a while since I’ve written. Before, this was a great outlet for me when things were bothering me, overwhelming, or just weighing on my mind. I guess what happened just floored me so bad that I really didn’t think I could say anything constructive about it.
My wife had a miscarriage. On my birthday. It was the scariest, most awful thing I have ever been witness to. We are both crushed. It was after the first trimester so things had really started to set in. I had just told my daughter the previous weekend. I don’t think she will really understand what happened.

Fast forward to yesterday. 27 days after we lost our baby. I get a letter in the mail from the department of revenue. My piece of shit ex is having them look into my earnings to not only get more money, but she is also trying to get me to pay for a bunch of past due doctors bills. The letter states that I have an obligation to provide assistance and care for my child, like I am some sort of dead beat that doesn’t already do that and more. I have health insurance that covers my child. So there are bills piling up that could have been avoided had this bitch ever bothered to communicate with me and get the current policy number. Not once, never called, never said “hey I am doing this”, nothing. Just some ridiculous letter from the state. I have a job. Two jobs. She has zero. The fact that this letter was even allowed to be sent out speaks to how broken this system is. If you don’t work and had two more kids with someone else who doesn’t make enough money, get on welfare. My money should go to providing for my daughter. Once again, some piece of shit person just thinking they are entitled to coming into my life and trying to wreck it. I work hard. I care for and protect my wife and child. I don’t bother anyone else. But enough is enough. I WANT to do SOMETHING back to these people. No more of this. It has been six years since I have wasted a breath saying anything letting her know what I REALLY think about her and this bullshit situation. Other peoples decision to be awful aren’t going to bring me to my knees, that will be the position they find themselves in when they beg the skies to stop raining down punishment.

I used to wear a lot of baby blue. Now my wardrobe is pretty much all purple, with the occasional black band t shirt. Lots of milestone types of dates have occurred recently. Dogasaurus turned 8 last weekend. He has been with me since 2005, pretty much a little monster sidekick through all of the good and bad times. Never mattered how screwed up things were, he was always waiting for me at the door (trying to smash it down usually). It was Samm and I’s 2nd wedding anniversary yesterday. I guess if you would have told me over the summer that we would be spending that together, still married, I would have been skeptical. Hopeful, but skeptical nonetheless. I still have my bad days, its always on my mind. Last night I got to hear, and see, the kind of emotional overflow I have been waiting and needing to see from my wife. It was a joyous and loving occasion, a wedding anniversary, yet she said what I have still needed to hear these last few months: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” A marriage that has been to the ultimate lows can finally move on. It was a moment, and I made sure to suck it up. I can’t even say I could miss this, because I am not sure it was something we had ever truly had. Not like this. I have loved my wife since the day I met her, things just got off to a tumultuous start and never could pick up. I don’t buy into the “everything happens for a reason” bullshit, because NO ONE will ever tell me that what happened to me, needed to happen. I am just going to cherish what I’ve got, never take it for granted, and keep making sure I myself do the right thing for me and mine. I love my family, my wife and soon to be two children, and I love the hell out of my friends. I’m missing a few of them like crazy, I’m glad I can still now look fondly back at that special week two years ago when all of them came together to send us off.

I’m going to write this next one for everyone out there that was born for a reason. This is the 100th day that has passed since I began this blog. It is crazy to re-read the very first post that I made, and reflect on everything that has happened since. 100 days doesn’t seem all that long in the grand scheme of things, but when you compare where I was at in my life on Day 1 and where I am at now, you would’ve thought it would be hard pressed to cram all of that into one full year. The great unknown was what I was stepping into. Now here I stand with more clarity. Clarity on where I am at myself, and the situation around me. Change is always present in everyone’s life, all of the time, but I can honestly say that I’ve come out of these past 100 days a better person. The journey included so many physical miles, yet it was the experiences that occurred while traversing them that brought about the most movement. I will honest, if you had told me “hey man keep it together, you’ll get through this and your family has a real shot at making it out of this intact”, I would have been skeptical at best. Things just seemed so bleak at times. Here we are 100 days later though, and the scars from the road are a manifestation of wisdom brought on through suffering and the trials of putting my life’s path back together, brick by brick. I’m not into all of that hokey self-trumpeting bullshit, but I will say that I am glad I kept the faith and believed in myself, and always made sure I did the right thing. That is the only reason this got me to this point, no doubt. The reason it worked out this way, and not someone else’s perverse version of what should have been, is because if you are really that pathetic of a soul to dare fuck with the life and family of a man willing to fight for it, your’e going to get slapped down like a bitch every time. As it should be. For my daughter. For my wife. For my child on the way. And for my goddamn self, the journey goes on.

It all repeats again. Six years were spaced between my first time in Tallinn and my most recent arrival. When measuring out how much I have changed, that solo voyage I made on my 25th birthday is as good a place to start as any. My daughter was still just an infant at the time. I remember walking through the streets of the old town looking for something to bring home to her. The small handmade wool coat I bought is something she still gets to wear, on the rare Florida Winter days. As much as Cal has grown, I feel like as a person I have grown right along with her. I miss her so much. As I sit here on the verge of becoming a father again, I am sad to say that I find too many similarities between when my first child was born and today’s times. Right now I struggle almost daily with thoughts about what happened this past summer. Writing in this blog is the only time I have brought this up, since I stopped going to a counselor in July. To me it feels counter productive right now to bring it up with anyone in my everyday life, so for now, I write. I’m a different person than the 25 year old version of myself. I look at the bright side of things. Things are bound to get better. You’re gonna find true love. And start up a family. I think this time around, things will not repeat themselves and I am much more driven towards taking care of the right things. There is no “why me” because I am totally confident in the fact that I do the right things now. Fathers have to.