Breathing

I want to tell you something. Something you need to hear but won't enjoy learning.

When your Mom left, over the course of that year and a half where you were shuttled back and forth, every week, to spend seven days with Me and seven days with Her, I got lonely.

I've heard it said that the nights are the toughest but that wasn't the case for me. The nights were the easy part. The mornings were the misery.

When you wake up in a house that once was a home and the rooms sit vacant and apathetic to your gaze, your mind entertains itself with all sorts of fancy. What could I have done, what could She have done, what could We have done, etc.

There is nothing more emptying to see than a child's bed unoccupied and sounds of that child vacant throughout the house when a Father wakes in the morning. It's crushing. It's absolute.

During the weeks when you were gone I would pass my evenings drinking alcohol, as much as I could hold in. It made time vanish. It made me hope. False dreams built upon a very real catalyst. Eventually, I would bid the night adieu and find rest on the couch. I never slept in the bed after your Mom left. It felt foreign to my skin.

On particularly tough mornings I would listen to Kris Kristofferson's music while I prepared for the day and fantasize about what life would not be like if I were here. The 38 that my father gave me when I moved to Georgia became a constant companion. I always had it nearby. Just waiting for that moment of acceptance, I suppose. Waiting to wave goodbye to the walls.

Obviously that moment never arrived. It tried to, I think, but I always found a reason. Two, actually.

The funny thing about a gun, something I never really knew, is that if you hold a gun without intent... it's just like holding anything else. But if you hold a gun with intent... it gets so damn heavy in your hand.

I think that's because you're not just holding a weapon but you're holding your entire life.

I say all of this because I made a promise to myself when both of you were born that I would never, ever, lie to you about who I am. I have not. I will not.

I want you to know that sometimes it's OK to give up. Sometimes it's OK to lose.

Just make sure you're Breathing the entire time.