How I lost you…

Dear HollyAngel,

I should tell you how it came to be that I lost contact with you.  I will forewarn you that I am not 100% sure if the “why”s involved, but I will try to establish the Truth as I see it. 

Your mom and I were very happy together when we first fell in love.  I thought I had finally found true happiness and that I would know joy the rest of my life by your mother’s side.  We shared our dreams and our fears and we decided that we would face both together.  I remember being filled with our Love and I felt this way through most of our marriage.  But as time passed and our lives became more complicated, it became hard to see our dreams.  We felt overwhelmed by the everyday stresses involved and began to view each other as a source of our problems rather than as solutions.   Your mother and I rarely fought, but when we did it was an event.  The emotional violence perpetuated against us as a family was unfortunate, but most would not have viewed it as exceptional.  We were a typical middle-class family.

During most of our marriage I drank (as did your mom), although it should be noted that I was not your run of the mill drunk.  I always had a good job and I didn’t get violent or abusive when I drank.  Still, alcohol abuse clouds the mind and causes misperceptions.  After realizing that our lives were spiraling downward and also getting deeper involved in my own spirituality, I stopped drinking.  As I became more sober, I began to see very clearly then that my relationship with your mother was tragically flawed.  Somewhere along the way she had lost faith in me and to this day I am unable to re-establish it.  We took a couple of shots at counseling but there was always an excuse not to continue.  Eventually, we separated.  During our separation we had decided to work on our relationship but there was too much too wade through.  I never felt like my efforts during our marriage were reciprocated and your mother never felt I was truly invested in salvaging our relationship.  We began a divorce which would separate you and me, although I didn’t know it at the time.  (During our marriage your biological father signed his rights to you over to me.  This allowed me to adopt you.  We began the proceedings but your mother decided it was in your best interest to renege on her promise to your father and pursue child support.  While I was adverse to this course of action, legally I lacked the ability to do anything other than what your mother wanted.  If I had known that she would eventually keep you from me I would have been much more insistent, but I never for a moment dreamt she was capable of such action.  The adoption process was stopped and the support process was started.  I will never forgive myself for allowing it…never.)  As our separation lingered on, your mom began to view me as a monster that deserved no access to you or your siblings.  Just before, and during the divorce proceedings, she vehemently pressed this singular issue.  Coupled with her efforts to keep me from you were my own attorney’s failures to prove I should be allowed access.  In the end, I lost you and your siblings in a whirlwind of misdirection and twisted truths.  Despite you mother’s assurances that I would have equal time with you and your siblings, my visitations with you were immediately hindered and eventually altogether eliminated.  And although I have legal action I could take, my fear of losing you entirely by provoking your mother’s wrath and a lack of the necessary finances keeps me from pursuing it.  (In fact, this was the grandest of my attorney’s failures.  All I wanted from our divorce was the legal right to continue being your Dad.   It was the first and foremost request I had of him, and he failed it completely).  In the end it seems I have lost you in spite of my prudence.  Only time will tell.

Your mother’s perception of me is her justification for quashing our relationship.  In her mind she is protecting you, or so I like to believe.  The alternative, that her motivation is simply to cause me pain regardless of the psychological impact on you, is incomprehensible to me.

If I had been a better man at the beginning of our relationship, if I had been stronger in the middle or if I had been more vindictive and agressive at the end we might not be here today.  As it stands, I can now only make efforts towards the future.  It is my hope that my efforts will bring you back into my life.

 I’ll write more soon.  I Love you dearly, HollyAngel.

Love,

Daddy