I came not to send peace, but a sword… – Matthew 10:34

…and I … I have made WAR. – The True Mayhem

Yesterday, on a Friday, I drove to Tallahassee to deal with the Department of Revenue once and for all, face to face.

Once I got the address right, I headed to the location without an appointment (because they do not do appointments). I had gone through the usual revolving door of phone calls with absolutely no luck and no calls back, despite being promised a phone call as soon as there was an update on my case. Each time I called, there ended up being a different part to the story added in by whoever I was happening to speak to at that time. The last time I called, that Monday, I was able to get on the line with a supervisor. Even they seemed confused at first when they first brought up the case on their computer. The one consistent aspect of this situation is that every single time I called, the Department of Revenue phone operator always agreed that this was all done in error and that they had no right nor proper instruction from the courts to garnish my wages. This time, the supervisor told me that they would “send my case over to the local office and request the Income Withholding order be rescinded”. That local office, was of course all the way in Tallahassee.

As I drove through the maze of streets that is Tallahassee’s downtown district, I noticed all of the various state agencies buildings, and of course, law offices. The law offices all look like refurbished homes, very quaint and nice. I actually really enjoy that style of architecture found throughout the deep South, usually accompanied by tall trees with moss hanging down from the branches. When I turned onto the street with the Department of Revenue, I drove right by it. It was not what I expected at all. The location near my house, which is in Crestview, is actually not that old and at least is spacious enough to accommodate a room full of people waiting to speak to a case worker. This one in Tallahassee was shrouded in trees, had posters and flyers in varying states of peeling and cracking, and for the most part was a very unassuming building. There was nothing that told me I was in the right place except for the writing across the one door visible from the parking lot. CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT.

I walked in, several documents in hand, and went up to the counter. After giving some basic information, the clerk told me to have a seat. There was no number to take or any way to gauge where I was in line. The building had a very narrow hallway that went in both directions and lined with the booths that you would be called to sit at, and then the waiting room. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned or vacuumed in quite some time. None of this bothered me, they are merely observation. There were two other people in the room with me, a teenager whose mother was meeting with a case worker, and a large gentleman who came in right after me. Immediately, he struck up a conversation with the teen and asked him how his grades were and if he did any sports. It was a very positive conversation to overhear, this guy genuinely seemed to want to impart a life lesson and any advice he could while he was here waiting. I guess it put me at ease as well, we’re all stuck in a situation of varying similarity and the important thing at the end of the day is that the children are taken care of. After the teen left with his mother, the gentleman turned to me and said, “I’d like to make sure that any young person that I meet doesn’t have to make the same mistakes that I did, except for the ones they are meant to learn from”. As soon as he said that, my name was called.

I sat down in front of the glass window separating me from the case worker that would be talking to me today, a Mrs. Morris. I had prepared myself to recount the situation at hand in a basic and thorough way that didn’t say too much at once, so we could slowly piece together what was going on. The previous visits I had made to the Crestview office always were very awkward and even hostile at the beginning of them, as I would barely be able to hold back my frustration, while someone brand new to my situation tried to play catch up and make sense of it all. This time was very calm, very quiet, and I felt a level of patience that I have never felt before when dealing with them. I absolutely credit this to me being sober now, there is no way I would have had the ability to sit through this and stay calm before. When I was still drinking and put in encounters like these, I would describe myself as having a lit fuse sticking out of the back of my head, burning down towards an explosion.

Eventually we got caught up and on the same page, and she called her supervisor in to speak with us. They both agreed this was an egregious error, started back in 2013 when they first became involved with my child support payments. To this day, we will never know how someone was convinced to enter in my information wrong and set up an income withdrawal without me being served with a court order. The bottom line is that this was never truly rectified two years ago. The supervisor came back out five minutes later after reading through all of the notes for my case that had been taken down each time I had called. He let me read through them and that is when he dropped the bombshell on me that contradicted what I had been told EVERY SINGLE TIME I HAD CALLED PREVIOUSLY. On June 3rd, one day after I had noticed my paycheck being short started trying to fix this mess, the Department of Revenue paid my daughters mother BOTH payments that they had received from my paycheck and my bank account. A grand total of over $1,400. She never said a word. After I had made her aware of the situation and the errors the day before. Just kept the money and kept her mouth shut. Disappointing. Surprising? Hell no. So instead of a “surplus” amount of money that might go towards my July payment, my account had a balance of zero dollars.

The supervisor and case worker went over all of the options we had and decided that getting the income withholding order cancelled would be the quickest resolution, and cover me for any future grief should someone claim they weren’t paid the following month of July. I was instructed to not make a payment in July as the Clerk of Court would be alerted of the discrepancy in the amounts. They also told me they would place an “override” on my child support case, preventing any income withholding orders from being sent out in the future. This was not done two years ago and they told me that was the reason this happened again, in short. Mrs. Morris would be notifying the Clerk of Court of the error, and making sure that the order cancellation went through and sent to my company by the end of next week. Also, going against everything that has happened previously with other case workers, both her and her supervisor gave me their direct phone numbers and also promised to call me every step of the way to ensure this was handled before July and that I would know the status of the situation. I thanked Mrs. Morris multiple times and told her how much I appreciated her help and finally giving me a resolution to this very frustrating and drawn out experience. It is a helpless feeling going through something like this and having every attempt to move forward, turn into a step backwards. I am thankful that Tallahassee is a close enough drive to where I could try and handle things in person. There are 9 more years of this custody situation, and hopefully they are without incident as far as the child support goes. I accept that, it is the way things are. I do not wish to speak to any of these people ever again and do not plan on being the cause of any reason for them to interfere with my case. Leave me alone to raise my daughter in peace. I consider this the end of a chapter in my life and I am done thinking about it.

That drive up Capital Circle towards the highway with my windows down and music loud was one of the most liberating feelings of my entire life.

…I vow, lest I die tomorrow, you’ll never be the father I am

You can think of your ups and downs in life as the ocean’s surface. Constantly in limbo rolling high and low. With the occasional thunderstorm. No matter how fierce the waves get, nothing is less permanent than water. The calm returns. Cycle repeats while following no definite time frame. From a distance, from afar, we can sometimes see the storms rolling in. Other times they catch us unaware.

I woke up yesterday in a particularly good mood. I’m a semi-early riser these days, and when my girlfriend doesn’t have to go into work until the afternoon, I sometimes let her sleep in while I get ready and head out the door to work. I’d just finished putting the proverbial pen to paper on my last blog post, and I think one could say it was a positive one. I felt really calm and in a content state of mind. About midway through my work day, I checked my bank account. Nowdays, with direct deposits and automatic payments, I don’t have to do much in the way of actually paying my bills. It all gets done for me, in an automated system. That being said, and anyone who has had the unfortunate experiences of having their finances go under is probably the same way, I like to check on things around payday “just in case”. Every month the same bills get paid, including my child support that I have automatically paid out by check. After bills, I have roughly the same amount left in that particular account every month. Except this month, its not. I immediately notice my paycheck is short. A lot short. When I go onto the payroll site for my job, I look through the latest paycheck and sure enough, a line under deductions that has never been there before is listed at the bottom. Child support. Somehow, my work had been told to pay my child support, without notifying me, all in lieu of me paying it on my own, on time, for several years.

Let me preface the rest of this by saying its not about the mother of my child. I am going to focus on a very broken system that has caused a lot more damage and headache than they have helped along any sort of “support” for my child. The Florida Department of Revenue is run by incompetent, under educated staff that constantly provide different answers whenever you have the unfortunate need to ask them a question. Whether its in person, or over the phone (after waiting for up to an hour) I have never gotten anything resolved despite always bringing documentation of all of my payments. Two and a half years ago, they attempted to have my wages garnished from my employer. Luckily that time I was given a letter stating their intentions and was able to go in person to their office in Crestview. The person I spoke to immediately told me this was in error and they were not allowed to do this without a court order. As in I would have to have been served with a notice to appear in court and told by a judge that my income would be withdrawn from my paychecks. Which of course has never happened. Not then, and certainly not now. So why are my wages being garnished from my paycheck, out of the blue, despite there never being a late payment made to the Department of Revenue? When I called today to ask, twice, they sure the hell didn’t know either!

When the Department of Revenue became involved in my child support payment, it was early in December of 2013. My child’s mother claimed I had not paid that month yet (it was around December 4th, check was in the mail at the time). SO their first record of me included that “missing” payment. When I had to pay them in January, I was already in arrears according to their records, despite her eventually getting my personal check and cashing it. When they attempted to garnish my wages, it became almost secondary to me that they were missing a payment from me because of how distraught I was about them contacting my employer. Once the wage garnishment issue was resolved, I tried to move on from there and simply told the Department of Revenue I had paid her the month of December and could prove it if they needed me to. They never once told me I had provided anything sufficient enough for them, despite me going to their office with the check receipt, bank statements, and anything else showing that I had indeed paid child support the month of December 2013. I was not going to pay these people for something I had already paid. This all was going on while my wife (now ex wife) was going through chemotherapy for lymphoma and unable to work.

Several months later in May of 2014, I planned a trip to Iceland with my spouse after she was given a clean bill of health. My passport had expired so I paid to have it renewed and expedited. It was denied, and the reason was because of unpaid child support. They got me. So I had to quickly pay that (which anything involving this department moves at a snails pace) and wait for the hold to be lifted from my passport application. The Department of Revenue accepts payments online, if you also pay an outrageous fee for doing so. It added almost $100 to my payment, just to pay online. After this, I called incessantly trying to see when they would contact the passport agency and lift the hold. No one was of any help, no one knew what the hell I was talking about, and every time I spoke to someone I always got a different story. With the time winding down, I went to the office of Jeff Miller, the representative in congress for our district of Florida. His aide went above and beyond trying to help me, just to get some sort of documentation out of the Department of Revenue that I had indeed paid the full amount of child support. Eventually, a letter from someone in Tallahassee finally was faxed to whatever office “releases” passport holds, and THEN contacted the passport agency saying it was ok to go ahead and overnight mail me my passport. I received it 2 days before we left. And only because of Congressman Miller’s aide moving things along. I have no idea how long this would have taken had it played out at the normal speed.

So here we are two and a half years later, every month in between with documented acknowledgement by the Department of Revenue showing I have paid on time and in full. Which apparently is not enough to prevent these people from contacting my job behind my back and illegally stating they are to take money directly from my paycheck and send it to the Department of Revenue. I doubt I will ever see that money returned to me, and if they bother to tell me this has been resolved again, why should I believe them? There is nothing protecting me from them, there is nothing forcing them to be accountable and treat me with any dignity. Being a part time parent is an uncomfortable reality for us as it is, without these distractions and apathetic intrusions into our lives. The bottom line is this: have they helped my child in any way shape or form? Absolutely not. As for myself, they will never know the details of my healthy, happy, and wonderful relationship that I have with my child, all while fulfilling my financial obligations to her mother, nor will they ever care to. ALL I AM TO THEM IS A CASE NUMBER.

…with them and I combined, I’ll beat an early end

The biggest thing to keep in mind when befallen by tough times is to remember that there is always more to come. It is you who decides what types of experiences lay ahead for you. The biggest difference between my younger years and the last few transformation-filled years life, is that I removed words that meant finality from my vocabulary. Do not ever think “this always happens to me” or “my life is ruined”. Life’s great illusion is when it tricks you into thinking you’re on a pre-ordained path. That happiness that eludes you is merely out of reach until you learn the tools with which to grab it.
I have wanted to grow into a family for a really long time, since becoming a parent. Traveling by myself so much and then wanting that sort of thing may seem like there should be a chasm between those two realities. There just is so much fulfillment in being a father and a husband when you have the love reciprocated. When I finally started looking myself in the mirror over the past few years and beginning to know that I needed to be better at both of those roles, that is when I understood the power of having a family around you.
A real family just wasn’t something that could have survived in my past relationships, as much as I wanted it. That being said, my mishaps and mistakes that I made have gone a long way in teaching me valuable lessons. I’m very thankful for where things are at right now in my life and the steps that continue to be tread towards a healthy family. I would never have been able to (nor deserved to) have a life with someone else of this high caliber, had I not finally changed how I was attempting to live my life. I am oh so proud to be with a person that has done the right things and treated other people the right way. I appreciate those qualities and I am relieved to have brought a person who possesses them into my child’s life. You can have a family with that sort of person with those sorts of moral fibers. One that will last an eternity. I am glad this family eluded me for all of these years, because had it came earlier, I’d have certainly lost it.
Getting to live with someone who makes you laugh, smile, and look forward to coming home is pretty damn cool.

nor·mal·i·ty
nôr?mal?d?/
noun
the condition of being normal; the state of being usual, typical, or expected.

I think I have always wondered what it would be like to be “normal”. That is not saying it was something I have always desired. I used to have a very different outlook on what it was like to be considered normal. Living a normal life, having normal behaviors, a normal daily routine. I was really unhappy with a lot of things to the point where I allowed them to affect so much of my demeanor and view. I guess I didn’t think being “normal” would get me to where I wanted to go, so I embraced some extremes instead. Anger and alcohol were my route to self destruction and a path that got me nowhere.
Perhaps we equate normal as meaning “boring” or something that could never fill whatever void within ourselves. I think there is a big problem with people in my generation glamorizing being damaged. A combination of a depression, abrasive appearance, and a negative attitude has set the tone for being as far from “normal” as possible. I wasted so much time being angry about things instead of living my life worried about what was actually under my control. I am not getting that time back.
My sobriety has brought a lot of perspective on how I want to live the rest of my life and so far it has been fulfilling and worth every struggle it took to get here. I love being calm and stable in every situation I have found myself in, and that out of control feeling I used to embrace never appears. The first few instances that arose that in the past, could have caused me to exacerbate or make much worse, instead were handled rationally and were resolved. Leading me to say “I guess this is how a normal person handles things”.
I am working on being “normal”. And I am enjoying every day of it.

My daughter turned 9 years old today. Yesterday, she played ukulele in her first music recital. I feel like we have stepped into a time travel, one year she was still my tiny baby, now she is her own tiny person. I am really proud of her. Her life as a whole could have turned out so much differently, and she just makes it seem like every day is a joy to be experienced. Its easy to forget that there were obstacles to overcome seemingly right from the start, that grew as the years progressed and her awareness increased. But I guess that is the thing that makes her so special to me. She makes it look easy without ever letting the outside storms dim her smiling demeanor. She is my hero.

I am glad I have found stable footing in my life so that I enjoy my time with her to the fullest. There are no more risks lurking around every corner or unstable situations putting things in jeopardy anymore. She can just be a kid, one that seemingly has never had a bad day in her entire life. I feel like the changes and resolutions I have come to the past year have allowed me to focus on her happiness and growth. I never want my daughter to ever worry about if I will be there for her if she needs me. Last year during my darkest days, I doubt I would have been able to complete my journey without the love and adoration of my child. If she faced each day with a smile, then that was enough of a reason for me to attempt to do the same, no matter what.

So there she was yesterday, on a stage in front of a lot of strangers, playing an instrument she had only gotten to practice every other weekend on for close to a year. With each note she strummed, it was like a reminder of how beautiful things can turn out if you really want them too.
I feel like the family I have always wanted to have around her is finally growing.

in your peripheral vision, a beast called truth has risen

I really believe most things happen when they are supposed to. The cards that get drawn are dealt when it was time to read them. That being said, things seem strange and coincidental, even though I know that they are not. I was riding home yesterday when my girlfriend brought up out of the blue, the question of if my ex wife still had my last name. Since my divorce went final, I have blocked all contact with her. Phone, email, social media, everything possible. So needless to say, there was no way for me to know that. Due to the volatile situations my ex wife often was involved in, I certainly hoped that she had went back to using her maiden name. This being the age of the internet, I had my answer in less than five minutes. Sure enough, she had changed her last name back and but apparently that hadn’t changed her self destructive behavior she exhibited while she shared my own surname. The most recent result showed that she had been arrested for multiple counts of felony drug possession…less than 24 hours ago.

I always knew this would happen. It was not a matter of “if”, it was “when”. There is no doubt that it would have (and should have) occurred while we were together. The risk of it happening in front of my daughter or dragging me down with her was always this menacing dark cloud hanging over our marriage, to the point where it was almost like a third being within the relationship. When it gets to that point is where the reality sets in: HOPELESS. Let me say something that, while being my opinion, I am going to say is truth by trial. When you are in a relationship with someone who is an addict, trying to help them all by yourself is HOPELESS. When you are in a relationship with someone who has a mental illness, trying to help them without any therapeutic knowledge and professional counseling is HOPELESS. The only way you can help whatsoever is letting go of any expectation and accepting that things will get close to rock bottom before they improve while you are merely a guiding aid, after they themselves are the ones that want to change utterly.

Seeing the mugshot was like seeing a ghost. I have seen her go through the stages of cancer, hooked up to chemotherapy and having her body ravaged by poison. I have seen her go through a miscarriage, opiate withdrawals, car accidents, every train wreck situation possible…but I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen anyone I know personally look this bad in present time. She has finally taken that step into a demons grip of hard drugs. Meth. Shooting up. You know those fucked up commercials and online advertisements warning people about doing hard drugs, and the effect it has on your physical appearance? I always wondered what parents and friends felt like when they saw the lifeless visages of someone they knew withering away.

Do I blame myself for cutting her from mine and Cali’s lives almost two years ago? No. It took confronting and dealing with my own codependancy issues to say that, but no. Because let me reiterate this, and anyone in a similar situation should at least stop to listen to this point: what happened this weekend was going to happen no matter what. Whether we stayed together or not. Whether she was in Florida or not. She DID all of these same things while we were married. With a brand new house over her head, jobs paying her, schools educating her, a little step daughter adoring her. You can choose to look at it through whatever opinionated view you have of addicts and those with mental personality disorders, but there simply is not a way to place the same values on things that someone without those kinds of issues will, compared to those that do. So before you puff out your chest and think you are going to “protect and to cherish” no matter what, please educate yourself on what is really at hand and how to help, while protecting yourself. I’m fortunate. I got out before there was no coming back.

Codependent relationships are a type of dysfunctional helping relationship where one person supports or enables another person’s addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.

 

---

Obviously, this all churned up a lot inside my mind. I was almost mystified while contemplating how in the hell I arrived at the point I am at in life, compared to how things were back then. I often ask my girlfriend what planet she is from, because of how foreign and awe inspiring being in a healthy relationship seems to me at times. I never ever say this word, but the closest I can come to describing my circumstances in life the past 9 months is “blessed”. Fittingly, a package arrived for Whitney this weekend. A girl from Greece who read our story on Humans of New York did a drawing of her standing in the water that day way back in August. It had her quote at the top, “and Happiness was everywhere that day”. What I loved the most about it was what this girl had added to the drawing, at the bottom. One word.

HOPE.