To The Father Of My Children

I've been reading a lot on what sometimes happens to the father - child relationship after divorce. The withdrawal that occurs when the father moves out and the children see him less and less. I know you will blame me for this too, just like I'm to blame for everything else. I will not badmouth you to our children (only my friends get the pleasure of that), I won't be a part of our kids thinking any less of you than they already do. You've done a good enough job yourself sabotaging your relationship with them. No matter how many times I reassure them that none of this is their fault I can still see their confusion because Daddy walked out the door. How can a 6 and 9 year old understand such a grown up concept when I can't even understand it myself? 

I hope every time you look at the faces of our children a small piece of you dies because you can see the reflection of a selfish and weak man in their eyes. Divorce happens every day but I don't believe many divorces happen with such a blindsiding force to the children like ours did. I don't even remember the last time we fought before you confessed your affair. You were too busy leading your own life at that point and I was too busy doing everything to even notice. Life will move on for all of us but it shatters my heart to realize that our children had such a short childhood where everything was comforting and stable and whole. 

I hope every time the kids are at a school function and they wish their parents were still together that you are physically ill and brought to your knees wherever you are. I hope the void in your heart (please let there be one) after doing this to your children is never filled. 

Even at this early stage the kids come home and they don't ask about you. You haven't been there in the past few years and the kids have gotten used to that. They don't know that you strung so many lies together, if you were Pinocchio, your nose would stretch around the world five times. They can sense, though, that they don't come first with you and it's been that way for a long time. You can't be neglected week after week and not recognize that even if you are only 6 and 9. It's Mommy this and Mommy that and it pretty much always has been. 

And you're right with those words that you screamed at me when you were trying to justify your affair - the kids WILL think what they want of you and that will be no one's making except your own. I won't tell the kids that Dad left because his own happiness meant more to him than they do. If they ask I will say that Daddy made his own choices and we all have to deal with those choices that we make. 

I'm glad that you agreed to the every other weekend visitation because at this point I don't think the kids could take the blow of being away from the one person who has been their rock. Maybe I do think too highly of myself and put myself on that pedestal, another thing you screamed at me, but there's no doubt that I am the better parent and our children deserve that. The better parent. I'm sure you would  yell at me again that I make you feel bad about yourself. And again that's a bed that you've made for yourself, I just shake the sheets. Our kids deserve to be with the person that makes them feel secure, the person that shows up when she says, the person who attends every school event, the person that they know always has and will put them first. And that person is me. 

You have a lot of making up to do to our children. Almost three years of never putting them ahead of yourself is a long time. The year deployment wasn't your fault but when you returned home you didn't try to make up for lost time. You just created more lost time and chose to leave the children whenever you could. The every other weekend schedule is probably more time than you spent with them when you were physically living here. I hope you make the most of it and start making memories with our children because as the digital photo frame scrolls through the moments of our lives from the last few years, I see the kids, myself and friends and family but I don't see you and that's just fricking sad.