As most of you know I just returned from a visit to Houston to see my 5 year old Daughter. But what many of you might not know is that it had been a year and a half since I’d seen her last. You see my x-wife and my daughter moved back to Houston during our break up and divorce. I knew  having 1000 miles between me and Ky (which is short for Kyla my daughters name) was going to be tough on our relationship, but I didn’t know just how bad it was going to be   I knew that my X was a wonderful mother and would take great care of her. She would give her the very best and protect her from harm and be totally dedicated to her. So for the first several months, even though I missed Ky very much I knew she was ok. But the thing I didn’t realize fully was, I wasn’t ok. I was far from ok. I was slowly becoming lost emotionally; I was losing my sense of purpose my love for all things that were important to me. I created a ball around myself to protect myself and to keep everyone else at a distance. I lost my faith in a lot of things, people, life’s great joys, happiness, and myself. I lost a lot of things that I had taken for granted, and as my attitude about life began to sour, I began to be very careless with my life; I didn’t seem to care anymore.      All these things seemed to coincide with my slow withdraw from my little girl’s life. I used to call her every day, twice most days. But as time went on I started to step back, thinking it just wasn’t as important to her as I had believed it would be, she was doing fine, didn’t really need me to be in her life like I had been. She was probably getting used to me not being there anymore. I now know I was making a major mistake. I wasn’t thinking clearly and I forgot one other important point. I NEEDED HER as much as she needed me!      It was after the holidays this past year when I really hit the skids. I couldn’t call her without feeling like it didn’t matter to her anymore. I couldn’t compete with my X’s family for attention; see they throw a Christmas like no other family. So Instead I spent the next month or so with a terrible case of the “oh whoa is me’s”And I almost, I mean almost decided to just cut myself off from my daughter for her own good, I mean she didn’t need a detached, lost, lazy, self loathing, self absorbed, butthole of a father.      One thing hit me right in the gut at that very moment of surrender. Wait just a damn minute, not only does my daughter need me in her life, I NEED HER IN MINE! And after screwing up so much of my life over the past year, I finally got some focus back. I started to call more I started to work on a plan, a plan to get myself up off the pity mat and do whatever I had to, to get the money together to see her. I knew it was what I needed to get me going back into the right direction, to join the rest of the world again. I put a lot of straight up blind faith that that’s all I really needed was to be connected to that beautiful, sweet, amazing, little girl of mine. And you know what? I was right. I did need that, it was there the second I saw her last Saturday morning. And you know what else I found out? I had taken away something that she had needed in her life very badly too. ME!       Our short time together just may have been the most important thing to happen to me in my life since, well since Kyla was born.      I share all this with you only because I know some of you may have been through the same kind of thing. And I know some of you may have had your marriage end and had kids taken away from you too. But let me tell you one very important thing, if your kid is just down the street or just a few hours away and you’ve just been too busy to go see them as much as you should. Don’t miss a chance to see them when you can anymore. Imagine 1000 miles between you and your child! Our kid’s need us, and it’s not their fault our lives might be tough from time to time. And besides take it from this reforming jack ass, there is nothing more special than the love of your child, NOTHING. And I am the luckiest man on planet earth to have the love of my little girl to guide me through this part of my life! I love you Kyla Lynn!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.