99,000 Miles, headlights pointed at the dawn

It is astounding to me that I haven't posted anything here for more than five months.  I guess I have been afraid to sit down and confront my deepest thoughts and emotions, and have contented myself to bury them under a veneer of moodiness and depression.  I have avoiding writing because I was fully expecting the next entry I wrote to be the last entry on this blog. The court case was supposed to be done in April. In May. In June. In July. In August.  And still...

It would take several entries to recount all that has happened in the intervening months.  I spent two long weekends in Maine, one in late March for my son's 10th birthday, and one in late May for my daughter's dance recital and my son's debut as a starting pitcher in Little League.  I then got the kids in late June and had them with me for most of the summer--I only returned them to Maine eight days ago.  There were many great times had, and a summer full of angst about what would happen, when it might happen, and what I would even say to my kids to explain things. 

Alas, that is a problem I've still yet to have to face.

The custody trial is over, it happened six days ago.  It was the farce I expected.  I went first and told my story.  My ex-wife then took the stand and claimed that, well, she just didn't understand what alcohol abuse was, had no idea that alcoholics lie and deceive people about their drinking, and now recognizes that she was naïve and has learned her lesson.  She went on to say with a straight face that her husband has now been totally sober for eight months, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.

The guardian ad litem (GAL) took the stand and presented his report, which stated very clearly that the drunk guy was still drinking, that my ex wasn't going to keep him away from the kids, and that the kids should come live with me.  He added that, in 20 years as a GAL, he had never felt so strongly about his recommendation.

Then the drunk stepfather actually took the stand.  He looked lobotomized, or at least heavily sedated.  His hands shook during his testimony.  He was incoherent and kept forgetting what he was saying.  His behavior screamed DRY DRUNK. Finally, my ex-wife's brother took the stand--he is sick about what his sister is doing to my kids, and he offered his services.  He is a drug addict with a checkered past, but he was very convincing in presenting his accounts of the alcohol abuse in her house and her refusal to acknowledge the danger.

And then, it was 3:30 PM and both sides rested.  And the judge said that he wasn't going to render a decision and that he was leaving for a two-week vacation in two days and didn't guarantee that he'd have a decision before he left.  The case was specifically added to the August docket as a back-to-school case that needed to be decided before Labor Day.  It was heard on August 18.  He did not rule before he left for vacation.  If he lets it wait until he returns, school will have started and my kids will return to their school in Maine.  The arrogance and laziness of this man is simply shocking.  How can he just leave us all hanging like this when he knows very well what is at stake?

Well, my question doesn't matter, because that is exactly what is happening.  The judge is on vacation, and won't return until after Labor Day.  I've been told that it's possible he will send in his decision while he's away, but he's given no indication of this.  I have literally been in shock for the past week about this turn of events.  I feel completely confused and empty, and have been scarcely able to go to work, eat a decent meal, or sleep at night since returning from Maine.  There isn't even any guarantee that he will render his decision when he returns.  My attorney has told me that she has another case with the same judge that has been hanging on for more than a month without a decision.  I do not understand how a legal system can exist that allows a judge to avoid doing his job with no repercussions.

So now I am sitting here alone with my thoughts on a Sunday afternoon.  My kids are back in Maine.  My stepdaughter is in Atlanta for two weeks with her father, though he's been an useless as ever and she has been bouncing around amongst other family members.  My wife is out shopping for school clothes, leaving me in complete isolation and feeling desperate and hopeless.  I have been having terrible headaches and stomach problems all day, and feel like just going back to sleep, because consciousness is the worst possible thing for me at this stage.

I am burned out with my job, and seriously contemplating leaving it, either to find something that pays more so my wife can quit or just up and leaving it to have time to be with my kids if and when they come here for good.  I didn't mention that we are expecting a baby in December, which would mean four kids in the house, including an infant.  There is no way we can both go on with full-time jobs like we have now, so something is going to have to give.  I am not exaggerating a bit when I say that I am at my breaking point.  I have used up all my strength just to get this far, and don't feel like I have anything else in reserve for the future.  And this is all assuming that the judge rules in my favor and I get my kids.

And if I don't...well, I'm trying not to think about that, but I already know the answer.  We will have no choice but to give up our life in Virginia, such as it is, and go back to Maine.  I have the promise of a steady stream of consulting work from a colleague, so I wouldn't have to be in an office all day, and could be a stay-at-home dad with the new baby and my wife can keep her job, as it's a telecommuting situation.  With the housing cost difference, we could actually get by up there financially.  But I doubt we'd get by in other regards.  We both hate it there--we hate the people, the culture, the weather, the lifestyle, you name it.  The only thing there is my two wonderful children, but I feel that would take precedence over everything else.  I've been away from them for five years, and I am done with this.  No more.

But I have to assume that, in spite of the delay, this ultimately will fall in my direction.  The evidence and the GAL's report are squarely on my side.  To believe my ex-wife requires believing in a whole bunch of fairy tales and coincidences.  My attorney even asked my ex if she knew what Occam's Razor was--she didn't, so it was explained that it is a philosophical principle that, in the absence of a known answer, the simplest explanation should be assumed.  In this case, the simplest explanation for all of the incidents and accidents (and hints and allegations) in my ex-wife's home is the presence of a raging alcoholic.  I think that sums it up very well.

So that's where things stand right now.  My kids are 500 miles away and, as far as they know, they will be going back to their familiar school routine in nine days.  I have every reason to believe that they will be coming here to live very soon, but I have no idea when "very soon" may actually occur.  And when that day does come, I have no idea what I'm going to say to them, nor do I have any faith that I will be able to provide what they need, given my fragile emotional and psychological state.

It is dark right now, so dark that I have a hard time even imagining the dawn coming over the horizon.  But all reason and rationality suggest that the sun will be rising at any moment.  I somehow need to pull myself together before the dawn comes, if it comes.

94,000 Miles, stuck at the airport

So here we are, well into 2014, five months after the ER visit that set this round of legal action into motion: nothing has changed, and it looks like nothing will change for several more months.  The GAL has not issued his report yet, in spite of assurances that he would complete his work by the end of January.  He has six more days to deliver, but he could ask for an extension if he feels like it. 

I had been hopeful that he would get his report in, I would get my final court hearing this coming week (before my kids' school vacation), and we'd load up the car and go.  I was actually doing pretty well at getting up in the morning, motivating myself to face the day, and being a productive member of society.  Then, with no fanfare, a notice arrived in the mail last week stating that there was a "mediation hearing" scheduled for late March and a "pre-trial/status conference" scheduled another week after that.

That one piece of information knocked me right off course.  The judge had ordered back in December that there would be a mediation hearing within 75 days of the appointment of the GAL; that date would come in mid-February.  At the time, my attorney assured me that we would be able to bypass mediation and get a final hearing scheduled for that same day.  It seemed simple: the GAL will present his report, testify about it, and the judge will make a decision.  But now I'm getting a completely different story.  Apparently the court can just ignore its own order to delay this for no good reason.

I asked my attorney to estimate, based on the new scheduling, when I could expect to actually have a final hearing at which custody could be switched, and she wouldn't say, but she didn't dispute my assertion that it wouldn't happen until May.  Worse, she denied telling me that the whole thing should have been done this month, and when I challenged her on it, she slipped into lawyer-speak: "well, I'm sorry if you got that impression.  I don't recall ever saying anything like that."  She is a good lawyer, but she still has a vested interest in stringing this thing out: after all, each hearing is another $1,000 for her.  She says she will try to schedule a private mediation with my ex's attorney, but even that will only save a couple of weeks.

So now, in a best case scenario, it will be sometime in April before any decisions are made.  In the meantime, another school year has been lost, and my kids are one year deeper into the abyss that is their mother's world.  The isolation, paranoia, narcissism, over-attachment, and tolerance of bad behavior that she displays has had one more year to seep into their souls, making it that much harder to undo the damage.  The separation has gone on for another year, leaving me only tied to them by a phone call each night for weeks on end during the long, dark winter.  I grudgingly made my arrangements for another long weekend over the President's Day holiday that will be spent holed up in a hotel room in Maine. I had convinced myself that there would never be another weekend like that, and signing up for at least one more is a stab to my heart.

I had a reminder yesterday of just how long things have gone on like this.  I was watching the 2014 Winter Olympics, and remembered the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, when I was hunkered down in a sparsely furnished apartment in Maine without TV service.  As a result, I missed the now-legendary U.S.-Canada gold medal hockey game.  Now that the 2014 Olympics are underway, it's been a full four-year cycle spent living like this.  When it started my son was in Kindergarten and my daughter was just barely two years old.  Now he is about to turn 10, and she is well into first grade.  So much time has passed, they have grown so much, and I have experienced so little of it.  Even if they eventually do come to live with me, I will always feel a deep sense of loss for the years of their childhoods that I did not get to share with them.

There is a certain feeling that has been coursing through my body each day since the court scheduling notice arrived last week.  It is a feeling that I have come to know too well, but can't really explain it.  It's a sensation of emptiness and coldness, tightness in the chest, detachment, and confusion.  It is not something that I ever felt before moving away from my children, so it's not just depression.  I have come to realize that is something far deeper, something that can only come from losing something you love.

I love my children more than I ever thought I could love anything.  I know it is still quite likely that they will be living with me soon, but, until that day comes, I am just left with one day after another to feel the cumulative effects of being separated from them for so long.  For now, I don't even know what the GAL will say, when my real day in court will come, or what will be decided.  Until all of those things happen I am just going to continue to feel like I do right now. 

It is a terrible way to be living--stumbling through life in a fog and wishing days away just to get out of this darkness.  I am 40 years old now and have wished away enough days--days that I won't be getting back.  This period of my life has been reduced to simple survival.  I don't know how many days or weeks it will take until anything changes, but I am fully aware that I am going to continue to walk around feeling terrible every day until then.

I don't even want to think about what I will feel if the court does not agree with me and my kids are allowed to stay put.  I am not OK with that and probably never would be.  I know that it's not a likely outcome at this point, and I am trying not to think about it, but the possibility definitely exists.  I have had so few things go my way over the course of my adult life, so I should be used to disappointment.  But if ever the time was right for the karma to even out, this is it.  I have suffered enough.  My kids have been poisoned enough.  The world may not be fair, but I'm not asking for fairness.  Life has already been so unfair to me--I'm just asking for a little less unfairness.

91,000 Miles

Another 1,000 miles have been added to the frequentfatherometer, and it seemed like just another routine three-day weekend.  My wife and stepdaughter came along this time, so it was five of us crammed into a hotel room, enjoying the free buffet, the indoor pool, running around on the beach in spite of the cold weather, and even a jaunt down to Boston for the afternoon.  It was, as always, wonderful to have some time with my kids, but sad to say goodbye to them for a while.  The difference this time was the thing in the air, the thing we can't discuss, the specter that is haunting everyone.

The custody case.

It's been 2.5 weeks since the prior hearing, and it will be another 2.5 weeks until the next (and hopefully final) one.  I have hit new lows emotionally and mentally during this period, often unable to work, think, speak, or be around other people.  My nightly phone calls with my kids have been a burden, as I am so depressed I can barely converse with them.  In short, I am paralyzed by the way things are, and am absolutely frightened at the prospect of being told "no thanks" by the judge.

I am trying my best not to think about that potential outcome, but I can't.  I know it is very possible that the court will conclude that removing the alcoholic from the home will take care of the problem, and then give my ex one more chance to prove that she can be a responsible parent.  It's equally possible that the judge will conclude that she needs to know more about me and my lifestyle before transferring custody, which would mean appointing a guardian ad litem who would then spend several months and several thousand dollars investigating my life.  That may be the worst outcome of all: more waiting and more money that I don't have.

Being back in Maine for three days was harder than ever.  First off, I hate November in Maine--the trees are barren, the sun goes down before 5:00, and the permanent midnight of the Maine winter is beginning to set in.  Second, I felt myself feeling like telling my kids what I was doing and why I was doing it, but I know that I can't put them in the middle of this.  Finally, and most importantly, I found myself looking around, knowing in my heart that, if the judge says they have to stay where they are, I will have no choice but to come back to this place, where everything reminds me of failure, of the nine years of my life that I wasted there, of the stupid decisions that led me there.

In 16 days I will be back in the courtroom again.  I get three hours to prove to this judge that my kids need to be with me.  Those three hours will, for better or worse, permanently alter the course of my life and my kids' lives.  As much as I want that day to come, I dread it as well.  Either way, it is going to be a momentous day, one that will replay in my mind for the rest of my life.  I am in no way ready for it, but really, how could I be?

90,000 Miles

I'll get the good news out of the way.  I went to court two days ago and the judge ordered the irresponsible drunk stepfather out of the house by 4:00 p.m. the next day.  Now he is presumably gone, and my kids will no longer be in danger from his presence.  I have shared this news with many people--my wife, my mother, other friends and family members--and they all have told me that this is "great" or "wonderful" or that I should be "happy" about it.  Instead, I have really never felt worse in my entire life that I do today.  Let's consider.

My son went to the E.R. 56 days ago.
I hired a P.I. three days later.
The P.I. documented the continuing alcohol abuse in the house within a week.
I hired an attorney and she prepared an emergency custody motion within two days.
It took a week to serve my ex-wife, get her to acknowledge service, and file the motion at the court.
It took more than two weeks just to hear from the court as to whether or not they would grant an emergency hearing.
They granted the hearing, but set it for another three weeks down the road.
The hearing was limited to 90 minutes, and the judge was 15 minutes late, leaving just 75 minutes.
The first witness--my ex's neighbor--wasted half the hearing with a bad amnesia act that caused the judge to warn her about perjury, and most of the rest of the time was taken up by the P.I. telling the court what she had actually said to him a few weeks earlier.
The judge concluded that there was no doubt that the stepfather was still abusing alcohol on the property, and asked the attorneys to come to her chambers to discuss how to remove him from the property
They remained in chambers for the rest of the 75 minutes.
When they came out, the judge ordered my ex to obtain a "criminal trespassing order" that bars her own husband from being on her property.  The judge also warned her that the court would hold her responsible for making sure that the guy stayed gone.
The judge set a date for the continuation of the hearing...36 days later.
And....scene.

So there it was--my day in court.  I spent hundreds of dollars on plane tickets for myself and my wife, a rental car, and meals (we thankfully stayed with a friend for free), thousands of dollars on a P.I. and an attorney, got dressed up, planned what I would say and do, and then all I did was sit there and do nothing, while the above kabuki act played out before my eyes.

Now it's going to be another five weeks of waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting.  My next visit with my kids will pass next weekend (yes, another trip to Maine), another Thanksgiving will go by without them, as my ex gets them for odd-numbered years, and then I'm supposed to get an actual three-hour hearing, at which my children's future will ostensibly be decided.  In the meantime I have to wonder whether or not my ex will actually take the court order seriously this time and keep her drunk husband out of the picture.  I have no faith that she will do this, so I have told several of her neighbors what has happened and that they need to call me and/or the police if they see him hanging around.  I also don't know what she's going to tell the kids--I'm sure she will say something like "Your daddy is mean and made him leave."  It wouldn't be the first time.

I got back to Virginia late last night, and slept for 12 hours.  I know I should be at least a little bit happy about removing the drunk from my kids' home, and maybe even from seeing my ex in tears afterwards--she finally got a consequence for her bad behavior!  But I'm not--I'm just paralyzed with fear, exasperation, and anxiety, and just want to sit in a dark room by myself.  The nightmare isn't over and, given the ridiculousness of the family courts in Maine, I still have no faith that anything is really going to change in 35 days.

My ex's attorney will argue that it will be too traumatic to remove the kids from their mother and their community, and that there is no threat to them with the stepfather gone.  He will make me out to be the big bad wolf, trying to steal the kids from their loving mother.  He will impugn my character and accuse me of stalking and harassing her, and I am going to have to try my best to not scream at him.  It's not going to be a lot of fun, and I am already sick to my stomach about it.

Worst of all, I have the next 35 days and nights to ponder what may happen, and think myself sick with the horrible possibilities.  I just want to rip off the bandage already--I am tired of slowly tearing at it day after day.  I know it's going to be bad, because I really don't feel any better after spending the past hour writing all this.  I almost always feel better after writing, but it's just not happening this time.

More to come.

89,000 Miles, approaching the Mixing Bowl

Three Thursdays ago, at about 11:30 p.m., I was awakened by the telephone.  I rolled over after the second ring, but couldn't get myself out of bed and over to my dresser to answer the phone before it went to voicemail.  As soon as the voicemail notification popped up, I listened to the message.  It was from my ex-wife, informing me that she had just returned home from the E.R. with our son, but that he was OK.

She went explain that the whole incident occurred when my son got home from football practice and her (irresponsible drunk) husband tried to help him take off his cleats.  It seems that her (irresponsible drunk) husband has a device on his leg called an external fixator--this horrible contraption holds his leg together as a result of his recent (irresponsible drunk) trip to the E.R. resulting from him falling off of a curb and shattering his tibia.  Anyhow, when my son's foot popped out of his cleat, his leg swung downward, directly into one of the five-inch long rods protruding from the fixator on the leg of his (irresponsible drunk) stepfather.  His leg was impaled an inch deep into this awful thing, and he needed six stitches to repair the laceration.

I called her right back but she didn't answer.  I called again in the morning to ask how our son was doing, and, while I was relieved to hear that he was recovering, I was furious about what had happened and that she waited several hours to tell me about it.  I asked her if her husband was drunk at the time of the incident and, of course, she denied it and got indignant at me for even asking.  She then handed off the phone to my son, and I talked to him.  He was upset by the incident, but he stood strong and told me he would be right back on his feet, and so he was.  He only missed one football game, and was back on the field the next weekend, when I came up to see him play.

So it would seem that everything turned out OK--my son was hurt, but recovered quickly, and seems to bear no mental scars from the incident.  He was very lucky to have not severed an artery or developed an infection--this surely could have been much worse.  I thought about the incident a lot for the next day or two.  Yes, it was an accident, one that I suppose could have happened to anyone.  But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that this incident was the direct product of living with an irresponsible drunk.  The guy had this contraption on his leg in the first place because he fell while drunk.  Furthermore, if a clear-headed adult had something like this on his leg, he would be more careful when helping a kid take off his shoes.

I got angrier and angrier just thinking about it.  This was it: the crossroads.  This was where I had to decide whether or not I was going to make a stand against my ex-wife's denial and deception and protect my kids not only from their (irresponsible drunk) stepfather, but from their (stupid stupid stupid) mother.

The next day I called my attorney, and asked her point blank, "if I can prove that the guy was drunk during this incident, can I get custody?"  She didn't guarantee it, but she said that I would have a very strong case.  She referred me to a private investigator, and told me that, if I hired him, he would find out "more than you think he will."  The P.I. proved her right--he interviewed a couple of neighbors, who confirmed that the guy still drinks malt liquor all day long, is often verbally abusive towards both my ex and the kids, and often passes out in the garage or on the lawn.  He also heard from one neighbor that my ex had come over to her house in tears a few months earlier, telling her that she couldn't control her husband's drinking and that she didn't know what to do.

Game, set, and match.  The guy is always drunk, and she clearly knows it.  I met with my attorney that Friday, right before picking up my kids for the weekend.  Two days later, after dropping them off, I went to her office and signed the custody motion.  I missed my flight home and got stuck overnight in Boston, but I wasn't even upset about it, because I knew I was doing the right thing.

I only wish that this newfound inner peace would carry me through the present and the immediate future, but there are too many other things eating away at me.  First off, my ex wasted no time dumping this on the kids.  The very day she got served, during my nightly phone call, my daughter got on the phone and told me, "I don't like the letter you sent to Mommy." At first I didn't know what she meant, so I asked her, and she answered, "You know, you told her that you want me to come stay with you forever.  I don't like that."  I kept my composure and told her, "I wish Mommy hadn't told you about that. That's really between Mommy and me."  I simply can't believe that she would burden a six year old with this sort of information, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised by anything she does anymore.

Second, my current lifestyle continues to fall well short of being satisfying.  I've begun counseling with my wife, and think that the therapist is good, but I still don't think that she is ever going to fully accept that she is in control of her own life.  My job is proving to be far less interesting or rewarding than I thought it would be, and I find myself daydreaming about doing something else.  I am still having trouble socializing and trying to make or retain friends, as I am consumed by anxiety.

Most of all, I have now put my children's futures, and my own, in the hands of the Maine District Court, the same court that refused my plea to remove the (irresponsible drunk) guy from my kids' lives two years ago.  Maybe, in light of the new evidence and my far more ambitious request, I will get what I want this time around, but then I worry about whether or not I actually want it.  As much as I love my kids, I worry a great deal about the impact of taking them away from their mother and depositing them into a new life just like that.  I know people always say that kids are adaptable, but I can't imagine having your whole world altered like that.  I suppose that's why I have resisted doing this for the past four years.

But now it's happening.  I am reasonably sure that this will end up with one of two scenarios.  If I do get custody, I will retrieve the kids and set about adjusting to a new reality.  If I don't, then I have to assume that my kids will be staying in Maine until they grow up, and I will most likely go back there again, as much as I hate it there.  After this latest incident, I simply can't imagine staying so far away from them, totally unable to help them or be there to protect them from the dangers in their own home.

Either way, my days as the Frequent Father are most likely nearing their end.  Just typing these words makes my heart leap.  The emptiness, pain, and emotional trauma that I've experienced over the past four years has pushed me to places I'd never been before, and hope to never go again.  I know that many long-distance parents make peace with their situations and embrace the fact that their children will love them no matter what.  Knowing that there is an irresponsible drunk in my children's home--and that their mother will never do anything about it--I simply have not, and can not come to that sort of acceptance. 

I have now proceeded through the crossroads, but am not yet sure which road I'm on.  I can't help but think of the so-called "Mixing Bowl" interchange, just a few miles from my house in Northern Virginia, where three interstate highways and several surface streets all come together.  As you approach it, a jumble of layered ramps 10 stories tall lead in all directions, disorienting even those who drive through it every day.  I have gotten on a ramp, but I don't really know where it will lead or how long it will take to get there.  The only certainty is that, once I come out the other side, I will no longer be the Frequent Father, I'll just be Dad. 

That's really all I ever hoped to be.

88,000 Miles

This summer put a lot of miles on the frequentfatherometer, which I'll get to.  I only got five weeks this year, not by choice, but due to my ex-wife's unique combination of dishonesty and inflexibility.  The divorce judgment grants me visitation "beginning one week after the end of the school year and ending on the first Saturday in August."  Last year that was six weeks.  I wasn't so lucky this year.

This year, the school calendar showed that school would end on a Wednesday in June, so I asked if I could get them on the following Sunday, but my ex refused, saying "that's not a week...you can wait until the following Wednesday."  Of course she knows that I can't come to get them in the middle of the week, so I made plans to get them 10 days later, on the ensuing Saturday.  Well imagine my surprise when, three weeks before the school year ends, my son tells me on the phone that school would be ending two days early, on a Monday, as there were two fewer snow days than expected (global warming again?)  I then asked my ex if I could get them on the following Sunday, since that was six days after school ended, and she breezily refused, saying I could come on Monday.  Well, I suppose I could have done that, but I am new at my job and can't just blow off days, so I gritted my teeth and kept to the plan.

So five weeks it was, but being the Frequent Father, I had to pack everything into that amount of time.  The rundown:
Fly to Maine to get kids
Fly to Atlanta for July 4th week with my wife's family, gamely attempt to work while a hired babysitter watches six kids upstairs.
Drive back to Virginia, put the kids in day camp for three weeks, try to work, but leave early every day so as to not miss out on any fun with the kids.  Go swimming nearly every night, and take lots of fun field trips on weekends.
Fly to Orlando for a week at Disney World, the first time my kids have been there, and hopefully fill them with a desire to see the real world, the one beyond their mother's bubble.
Fly back to Maine, arriving at their mother's house at midnight, because she didn't want to pick them up at the airport, citing her fear of driving at night.
Take the first flight home in the morning after three hours of sleep, and feel jet-lagged in spite of never leaving Eastern Daylight Time.

And then...what?  My credit card bill just came, with the tab for all of this fun now coming due.  I consider it the price of getting on with my life.  If I had stayed in Maine, I'd be making half (or less) of what I'm making in Virginia.  I have calculated that the Frequent Father lifestyle costs roughly one-third of the difference, leaving me the rest to have a nice home for my kids--as opposed to the two-room divorce apartment I had in Maine--and to save for their future.  The financial side is under control.

It's everything else that has me up early in the morning to spill more virtual ink.  I worry about the world of insulation and isolation that my ex has constructed around my children, a world in which they go to third-world schools that can't give them what they need, never go more than five miles from home, never have playdates, never have excitement, and never get to see anything new.  I worry about my ex's psychotic quest to breastfeed my daughter until she hits puberty (made far worse by the fact that she obviously pumped every day over the past five weeks to keep the flow going...that's just unfathomable).  Most of all, I worry about the stinking drunk SOB who still lives with them, and what he's going to do someday when he's in a bad mood.

As for me, the odometer keeps rising, but I'm not sure if I'm getting anywhere.  On paper, I should be content.  Four years ago I was stuck in a backward small town with a dead-end career, few friends, and a bad marriage to a controlling tyrant.  Now I am living in a big city, with a great job, a nice home, a bright future, and married to my long-lost love.  Two and a half years ago, in the depths of my depression, I made a list of things I want to change in my life before turning 40.  Well, I turn 40 this coming weekend, and it turns out that I've accomplished most of those changes.  But so long as my kids live 500 miles away under the iron fist of their demented mother, I'll always struggle to move forward.  No matter how many miles I travel in the right direction, this way of life will always cause me to spin my wheels.

Nevertheless, I guess another year of Frequent Father adventures awaits.  As with each year before, I will hope and pray that this is the last year of living this way, that next year my kids will be unpacking their suitcases and decorating their rooms in Daddy's house, getting ready for the school year.  I know it's not healthy to have such thoughts, but I can't help it.  Well, there's no point to it anyhow, so all I can do is prepare myself for the long year and the thousands of miles ahead.

74,000 Miles, going nowhere fast

The silence has continued, punctuated by a case of vertigo.  Last Tuesday I was eating lunch and felt myself becoming more and more dizzy and nauseous as the meal went on.  I began to suspect food poisoning, and left the office early to hopefully sleep it off.  When I awoke I wasn't nauseous any longer but the dizzyness persisted.  I forced myself to go to a work-related meeting, but I couldn't concentrate and felt more and more out of sorts.  Again, I figured I would sleep it off and all would be well.  On Wednesday morning I forced myself to go to work, but my head was buzzing all morning.  I finally went to the urgent care clinic around lunchtime, where I was swiftly diagnosed with vertigo.  The doctor's instructions were to drink lots of fluids and move as little as possible until I felt better.

For the next two days that's just what I did.  I stayed home, in a quiet house all by myself, as my wife and stepdaughter were away.  I slept a lot.  When I did have to get up I moved very slowly.  And, of course, I had far too much time to think about my job, my life, my kids, and my future.  The more I thought, the worse I felt; the worse I felt, the more I thought, and so on.  I forced myself to go to work on Friday morning just to be out of the house, but I was still too dizzy to be of any use, so I left around noon.  I got home, took a nap and, mercifully, woke up to find that I was no longer dizzy.  And that's when things really took a bad turn. 

In my moment of clarity the silence, loneliness, and isolation, piled on top of my career frustrations, my anger about my situation with my kids, my emptiness at losing my dad, and my general feelings of disappointment with my life, all came crashing down on me.  I sat on the couch in the dark and just felt the weight of my circumstances.  How in the world could I ever put the pieces of my life back together?  Where would I even begin?  I just didn't see any possible way forward for myself.  Though I didn't contemplate ending my life I did find myself wondering how I could go on living.

My wife called to talk to me, but I was too upset and angry to carry on a decent conversation with her, and I lashed out at her attempts to try to offer me any suggestions.  She told me that I should go to the hospital and check into the ER for an evaluation.  I decided to go to sleep and see if one more sunrise would cure my problems.  Sadly, it didn't, and I woke up this morning feeling every bit as freaked out as I did last night.  I finally decided that I need to find out just how bad off I was, so I drove to the local ER.

After waiting more than two hours (what if I had actually been suicidal?) I got a chance to talk to a counselor, who went over my options with me and told me that, if I so desired, I could be admitted to a locked psych ward, but that I would be surrounded by low functioning people, many of whom were psychotic, most of whom had tried to kill themselves in recent days, and all of whom (including me) would be monitored 24-7.  My other options would be a referral to a partial hospitalization program (PHP), which would consist of several consecutive all-day therapy sessions and an appointment with a psychiatrist, or to just ramp up visits with my current therapist and try to get an appointment with a psychiatrist, which could take a month.

I spent the rest of the day in a reverie of sorts, not speaking to or seeing other humans, with the exception of a brief phone call to my kids. Sitting around like this made me increasingly more depressed, but I simply lacked the motivation or self-confidence to do anything else. I have lost faith in my ability to be of any good to anybody, which is what brought me to the ER this morning in the first place. I had decided that I was going to proceed with the PHP.

After more consideration I then came to the conclusion that wallowing in my troubles for seven hours a day for several consecutive days with other miserable--and possibly unstable--people is not what I need.  I'm instead ramping up my therapy sessions and making a new commitment to staying as busy as possible so I can't get stuck in the morass of bad feelings again.  I suppose I've come to grudgingly accept that "fake it till you make it" is the only thing that's going to work for me.

68,000 Miles

My son turned 8 two weeks ago, and I was there in Maine to be with him, but it's taken me two weeks and more upheaval to be able to sit down and write about it. It was a typically complicated weekend by my standards, as it involved both his birthday and my cousin's wedding in New Jersey the next day. Thus, my miles were on the ground this time--I drove up and back. On the way, my wife and stepdaughter flew up from Atlanta to Manchester on Thursday night, where I picked them up, then we drove on to Maine to collect my kids for half of the weekend. We spent two days in Maine, drove to Connecticut, spent the night there, drove to New Jersey for the wedding on Sunday morning, then I dropped them at Newark Airport and drove back to Maryland.

Travel stress aside it was largely a great experience. It was the first time since New Years' that my whole family of choice (me, my kids, wife, stepdaughter) was all together at once, and we had a blast. We went swimming in the hotel pool for the afternoon, and then had dinner at a Japanese hibachi place on Friday night, which was great aside from my 4.5 year old daughter being scared of the flames shooting into the air. On Saturday I did the karate and dance routine for my kids then had a smaller than expected (more on that in a moment) birthday party at Joker's, where the kids got to be kids for a couple of hours. And then it was over, just like that. Poof, and back on the road.

The party was the very definition of bittersweet. Back in January I had asked my son to make a list of everyone he wanted to come to the party and then I talked with his mother and told her that I wanted to have one big party for him and that she was welcome to come. She agreed and even said that she would bring the cake. I then made a critical error: I asked her to handle the invitations, as she lives there and would be much more able to distribute them. I'm not exactly sure what happened over the next few weeks, but the end result was that only one of his friends RSVPed and that, a few days before the event, my ex told me that she wasn't coming. I asked her why and she told me that she was doing her own party the day after mine. I've learned my lesson.

Now it's been two weeks since I've seen my kids and it will be another two weeks until I see them again, and it's probably been the two worst weeks of my life. My father's illness has gotten worse, and I've become certain that he will be dead soon. Meanwhile, my brother came back with my parents from the wedding so he could be around to help take care of my dad so my mom could fly out to Arizona to retrieve my 93-year old grandmother. It was a very, very long few days with my brother in the house, as he basically won't even talk to me, for reasons that I don't understand. And then my mom returned with my grandmother, who is suffering from short-term memory loss and is nearly blind and deaf, and she wants to die too.

By last weekend here was the score: living in a nursing home/hospice, taking care of my invalid father, putting up with my martyr mother, facing a hellacious commute, having no space to myself. My wife did come up for a few days with her daughter and niece for their Spring Break, but it was of little comfort to me. By the time she went back to Atlanta, I had fallen into the deepest depression of my life. I couldn't get out of bed in the morning and only went to work two days last week. I pondered checking myself into a mental hospital but decided against it. I did find a counselor and am again in therapy, and I've resumed taking an antidepressant. But even after all of that the past two days got unbearable. I skipped work on Friday and spent most of the past 48 hours hiding out in the basement watching back episodes of Mad Men on Netflix.

Last night I finally decided that I simply needed to get out of there for good. I found a room for rent in a house that's 10 minutes from my office, and I paid for one month and moved in this morning. It's lonely, quiet, and strange here, but at least I'm away from the madness for a while. I don't yet know how long I'm going to stay here, but I've agreed with my wife to at least try this for two weeks to see if it makes it any easier for me to do my job and try to live a decent life. If it's just too much for me then I'm going to quit the job and go back to Atlanta where I'll probably check into some sort of mental health program. If I'm feeling better then we'll rent a place in Virginia and she'll move up in about 6 weeks.

It's an unpleasant and frankly scary time for me, and I'm having a hard time saying that I'll even make the most of it. I have spent about 36 hours with my kids in the past two months, and it can't be an accident that I'm feeling the way I am. I wish I could isolate those feelings from all of the job, family, and financial stress that I'm under, as then I could possibly deal with it. I know it's a bit selfish of me to run out on my parents when things are so dire over there, but I feel like I've done all I can do to help them, and if I try to do any more, I'll end up in a mental hospital. People may joke about stuff like that, but it's not funny to me.

I have never before seriously contemplated seeking that sort of help, and I'm trying one last, desperate move to avoid it. So here I am in this rented room, a stranger in a strange house, where the smell of death and old age won't haunt me all day, and where I don't have to worry about being stuck in traffic for two hours every afternoon. It's not going to solve my problems, but it has already removed two stresses from my life. I hope it works.

66,000 Miles

I'm back from a slightly elongated weekend with my kids in Maine. I got in late Friday night, picked them up from my son's karate class early Saturday morning as usual, and stayed through this morning to attend a conference at his school (more on that later). There was nothing special about the weekend--it's just routine at this point. Here's a rundown of this, a "typical" weekend spent alone with my kids.

FRIDAY
10:30pm Arrive in Portland
11:15pm Arrive at motel

SATURDAY
8:00am Karate (the boy)
9:00am Dunkin' Donuts break
10:00am Dance (the girl)
11:30am Lunch--hot dogs and fries
1:00pm Swim at indoor pool at hotel
3:30pm Showers and baths
4:00pm Kids jumping on the bed while I try to rest
4:30pm Computer games (boy) and Cartoon Network (girl)
5:30pm Dinner at Japanese/Chinese restaurant (my son loves sushi!)
7:00pm Watch Netflix movie on my computer
8:30pm Bedtime

SUNDAY
6:00am Boy wakes up and goes straight to computer
7:00am Girl wakes up and goes straight to TV
7:30am Breakfast in hotel
8:00am Boy plays with Rubik's Cube, girl makes me a bead necklace
9:00am Swim at indoor pool
11:00am Showers and baths
12:00pm Peanut butter sandwiches and cupcakes at Portland Market House
1:30pm Childrens' Museum of Maine (their idea...I was going to take them to the movies)
5:00pm Carry sleeping girl up to hotel room, boy reads Super Diaper Baby 2 book
6:00pm Take girl back to Mom's house (I wanted a boys' night)
6:00pm-6:20pm Girl complains about wanting Mommy, boy tells her that she's on her way there (good for him!)
6:20pm I make girl hug me while still in car before she runs off to Mom
6:30pm Different Japanese restaurant with boy (he demanded sushi again)
7:30pm Semi-successful attempt at serious conversation with boy
7:35pm More computer games
8:30pm Bedtime

MONDAY
6:00am Boy wakes up and goes straight to computer
6:15am I grudgingly wake up and take a quick shower
6:25am Pack up things from around the room
6:30am I break the zipper on boy's backpack trying to cram it shut
6:31am Boy has meltdown about broken zipper
6:32am I try to tell him that it's OK and promise him that I'll buy him a new backpack if I can't fix it
6:40am Breakfast in hotel
7:05am I manage to fix the zipper well enough for him to use the backpack
7:20am Leave to drop boy at school
7:45am Drop him at school and resist temptation to hug him in front of other kids
7:50am Coffee break
8:30am Conference with Vice Principal, Special Ed teachers and his teacher confirming that he doesnt need special ed, just extra accommodations in class for his Asperger's related behavior
9:30am Leave school
10:00am Return to airport in Portland

Some might say that I packed more of the good, quality time that a father should be spending with his children over the course of several weeks into 48 hours, and that I should be proud of myself for being such a devoted father. Perhaps, but my underlying emotion throughout the whole process is a slowly simmering anger at the fact that I have to live like this.

I wish I had the luxury to go about my business in my own home while blithely ignoring my children while they go about their business. That just isn't possible when we haven't seen each other for several weeks and then are shoehorned into a hotel room for a weekend. I can't just tell them that I want to read a book or that I've got chores to do. From their perspective, I must be off doing those things (or whatever it is that I do when I'm not with them) all the time, and I came all the way to Maine to see them, so they'll have my full attention during the brief time that I'm there. It's very different from when they've been with me at my approximiations of "home" in Maryland and Georgia, when there is a whole house to occupy and other people in the vicinity.

I have to admit that, in spite of my overwhelming and boundless love for my children, it just feels all wrong spending time with them the way that I just did. It's like we went somewhere on vacation, but the only thing we did on vacation was hang around the hotel and go out for dinner. There were no sights to see, no thrills to be had, and no dear friends to visit--just the three of us with a whole weekend to kill in a place that will forever reek of depression and betrayal to me. I long to whisk them away to some other place far away from Maine and give them that sort of experience, but it's just not possible given the many restrictions on my life.

And out of this whole experience, there are three images that stick with me the most, all of which just raise my simmering anger up to a rolling boil. First, my daughter, now almost 4.5, said her first words that indicate some feeling about the divorce other than blind acceptance when she told me, "Daddy, I wish you and mommy were still married to each other." The poor kid had just turned two when her mother threw me overboard--she doesn't even remember that I ever lived with her. She had never before expressed anything of this sort, but now that it's out of the bag, it's clear that no child, no matter how young, escapes from divorce fully intact.

Second, in my attempt to have a serious conversation with my nearly eight-year old son, he told me with complete earnestness (that's his only mode) "I want to tell someone in Maine that you need a job here so they can hire you and you can come back." It just took that one sentence for me to recognize that, while he no longer complains about me being away like he did two years ago, he would be much happier if he could see me all the time. I can't describe what an awful feeling I got from hearing those words, however sweet his intentions may have been.

Finally, there's the image of my ex-wife sitting next to me in the school conference room, looking worn and world-weary, faking her way through acting like a responsible parent in front of a room full of people who are keenly aware that she is a complete psychopath. I have to believe at this point that I will truly never, ever fully get over what I let her do to me. She may be poor, miserable, and devoid of friends or close family relationships, but she still continues to possess the only thing in the world that truly has any value to me: my children.

And now I've dumped all of this poison out of me. But I'll be going back for more next month, and countless more times for years to come, because the alternative is just unthinkable. I know that all good parents make sacrifices, but it burns me up that I have to sacrifice so much just to be able to enjoy a typical weekend with my own children.