Praise from a Fellow Father

Thanks for the props Erik, sorry I didn't find this months ago when you wrote it!

Glad you are well for the most part. Get to see your beautiful kids every now and then at school or downtown. Look forward to touching base again sometime. In the meantime, I will share the love. It feels good to be able to inspire others. Makes me feel like writing...
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From RadicalShift:
Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Thanks Sky! (http://piratepapa.blogspot.com/)
I ran across this blog, belonging to a friend of **********'s, and got the idea that maybe I owed it to myself to write a little something here.

I have been through much in the past 3 years. I went from more-than-flirting with polyamory and being intoxicated, ruining my marriage, betraying my wife and children, nearly devastating another person who is one of the most important people in the universe to me, to going sober, jumping headlong into another relationship, filing for divorce, fighting for custody and losing, changing careers, hurting my back, rebuilding most of the muscles in my body, getting a state job, going back to school, and now getting my own place, the first on my own since august 97' when i met *******.
I think that's about it.

There is more inside that capsule of a re-living but the details hurt this person, or that one, or me to go reliving.
******* and I are getting along famously, I finally am trusting her with our children and being thankful for our marriage. I have been reflecting on something interesting since I had a particular conversation with my kids.
Long-story kept long:
##### painted a beautiful picture and gave it to ******** and I for our engagement in early January 1998 that said on the back "may your souls be forever intertwined" or something close to that. I decided after storing it all this time that I needed to double check that ******* didn't want it and then give it back to %%%%% and ##### as a belated marriage gift. I had it in the car on the way over to their house, and (one of my kids) read it and commented that they really weren't intertwined forever after-all. I started into a really nice explaination (to her and to myself) about how once two people decide to get married, and/or start a family, vacation together, pay bills late together, own a house, get forclosed on it etc, that wether they like it or not, for better or for worse, they are definitely intertwined. Also what occured to me in that Teaching Opportunity, as my father might call it, was that to reject a person that close to oneself, was to reject part of oneself, and that really hit me hard.
That wasn't the turning point for trying to accept ******* and Respect her, but it gave me a nitris-oxide boost down the path of MAKING it work by hook or by crook. We will raise these kids, We said we would, We will do a good job, We will be grown-ups about our differences, We will be flexible for each other, We don't have to be jerks to make sure we don't fall back into that aweful patttern, the past is the past, and damnit, we are family.
The sobriety part has been.. I can't say easy, but i will say it has been a no-brainer up until now.
recently I have been feeling tempted to slip into a buzz here or there, and so far I have been strong with the force. I quit using everything except caffeine on 7-11-06, and haven't so much as dabbled since. I think that helped me get through the last few years and has cleared up a lot of things for me. I think it would be foolish to go any other way.
I am looking at myself as causal in my life, and using my break for independance to push myself to be a better dad, boy, man, student, worker, and anything else I am.
Over the last few years in my relationship I have been less mindful than I wish, and had become a financial and emotional depentant. I foolishly let my ideas about parenting and who it is ok for me to be to get derailed by another persons ideas and I am determined to find myself.
Another issue on the table for me is a thing I think common to many disasterous family breakups; I threw the baby out with the bathwater on a lot of cultural influences.. friends, family, customs, celebrations, philosophies, anything that felt ******* was out and I adopted a whole new set of what it was to be me. A distinct break that made my life definitely different from *******'s. The problem with that is that it forced everyone in the family to live two distinct lives. It took away traditions that bound us together in memories and experiences and took thekids out of their element when with me. Suddenly what it meant to be with dad was a rejection of everything it was to be with mom. This has hurt everyone. I am sorry to have done it. I also understand I am not alone in it, and the job at hand is to carefully cull through all of it and decide what is a keeper and what is thrown back to the cultural river. There are people I love and care about that I literally haven't talked to since the start of our family drama.
I desire a break from being a chamelion to another person, long enough to see my own colors and decide who I am post divorce- who has emerged out there other side.
I am up to the challenge of forgiving myself and ******* for this huge misunderstanding and give her credit for being who I fell in love with. And I'm up to the challenge of not compromising my choice to be seperate either. She has a right to be herself wether I agree with how she does it or not. My job is to be here for the kids and rebuild who I am for me, and for them, and re-create the family value/culture to suit who we all are on the other side of the huge chaos we created.
I am up for the challenge.
And it is hard.
Let's hear it for more pirate papas.
Thanks Sky. Keep the faith.

posted by radicalshift @ 3:37 AM