Soul Side Journey

…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.

 

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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.

Over the past year, I’ve learned a lot about how to move forward in a positive manner. Dealing with my problems in a healthy way definitely allowed some stability to come into my emotional well being, and I think that’s what brought me to where I’m at now. The process included coming face to face with an uncomfortable situation that I know a lot of people are faced with at some point in their lives: infidelity.

It’s a situation that is vilified as a life altering event, while at the same time seems to become more and more common due to social media. We invest so much of ourselves into our relationships that we can’t fathom how our partners could possibly be living a double life with someone else. So it usually blows up and is accompanied by a crumbling world sensation. Life’s over. The dream we had together is dead. Or at least that’s how it felt to me the first time it happened. Thankfully, I’m not as emotional as I used to be, and I feel like being patient and not wearing my emotions on my sleeve 24/7 was a benefit when this happened yet again.

I think an affair doesn’t necessarily have to be a death sentence for a relationship, and can actually be a way to mature and strengthen if handled the right way. It might not produce the same results for both people, and the relationship might not actually survive, but individually it could bring ones self to an enlightened and more aware path towards better relationships by being conscious of the other persons (and yours) needs. Reconnecting intimately is the challenge, and its up to the person that strayed to put a definitive end to their affair. Its hard enough with that elephant in the room, whispering insecurities…

I feel like my two experiences may have had similar roots, but produced far different results because of this path I was heading out on. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a death sensation. No true love could ever have a betrayal and not produce that ripped apart feeling. That being said, I learned from what happened, and remembered how I mishandled the same situation before. I was able to look at what caused it and why it was going on. Definitely taught me some lessons this time, whereas before things were just a mess.

Without an experience like this, I don’t know if I would have ended up now with a sense of self worth, as odd as that may sound. I finally was able to see myself in a way that wouldn’t allow me to be discarded like that again, and I was granted an eye opening vision towards the kind of person that wouldn’t do that to anyone in the first place. This time I recovered instead of ruined, when revisiting the despair brought on by an affair.