TL;DR -- The subject line, basically.
Yes, this post is obscenely long. Feel free not to read it.
Before I get all this off my chest, I want to preface it, first by acknowledging how profoundly non-Dawg it is. It is my hope that since we're in the doldrums of the offseason, this might be as reasonable a time as any to post this here. If it's categorically not appropriate here, mods, please feel free to nuke it rather than move it to the Chat. I probably should also acknowledge that the kind of self-disclosure I'm about to make here has historically gotten a mixed reception on the Dawgvent, at best, but I'm frankly pretty immune to negative feedback on things like this. Many of you saw my posts when I was going through my divorce (in 2017-2018); if you read those, you have a pretty good idea what this post is going to look like. I suppose what I'm doing is just plain venting. Given how long I've been on this forum and the relationships I've formed here, the Vent is the best outlet I've got for that.
With that said, I'm struggling pretty badly right now. My daughter turned 10 at the end of December, and my son turned 6 this past Monday; their birthdays have really kind of thrown into sharp focus how much they and I are missing, post-divorce. I have historically been a very, very involved dad, and I've tried my best to maintain that since moving out in August 2018, but it's awfully hard to feel like Superdad when you're only with your kids an average of 3.5 nights a week (every Thursday night, and every other Friday through Sunday). I do everything I can to make the most of the time I get with the kids, but cramming a bunch of "quality time" into alternating weekends (and the three waking hours I get with them on Thursdays) is nowhere near the same as always being there for them.
Instead of the normal routine -- the one we all (including kids) see on TV and read about in books, the one my kids had for what is still most of their lives at this point -- knowing where they're going to sleep each night, family birthday celebrations, shared meals, and all those other very basic things I took for granted growing up; my kids get pieces of all that, which don't add up to a comfortable or coherent whole. Although the custody schedule is reliable, no 6-year-old is going to be able to remember "Because it's Thursday, it's a Daddy night, but tomorrow I'll be at Mommy's, and next week I'll be with Daddy Thursday through Sunday." My son wakes up literally every morning and does not know where he's going to go to bed that night; he invariably asks at some point each day. We've tried a lot of things, including using kid-friendly calendars that are supposed to help with this, but he's just too little to grasp it.
He's also too little to wrap his head around what divorce really means. Obviously, I've had my own house for two-and-a-half years now, and he recognizes that. But even after reading a lot of books about divorce with him, having multiple conversations about what divorce is, enlisting the help of his teachers and his friends' parents, he just can't fully comprehend it. Several months after I moved out, in the car on the way to school, he spontaneously told me "I hope you and Mommy remarry" [each other]. His sister started crying, and I had to use every ounce of strength not to lose it myself. This Valentine's Day, he made a card for "Mommy and Daddy," and he told me we could share it. Last weekend, my parents drove down from South Carolina and my brother came up from Midtown to celebrate Brendan's birthday a couple of days early. When my brother arrived, Brendan broke down crying; when I took him aside to help him calm down, he said "Everybody's here except Mommy." I wasn't what you would call a "cryer" before the divorce, but I'll be damned if things like that don't get to me.
Those are just a few particularly salient examples of the kinds of things Brendan says and does routinely, and I feel indescribably terrible even thinking about them. Hearing him ask every day where he's going to be sleeping that night may not be quite that heartbreaking, but it hurts every time. And God only knows what the cumulative effect of all this is ultimately going to be on him.
This morning, I threw away the uneaten half of a Batman birthday cake I got Brendan on Saturday. His mom made him another cake on Monday; half of that one will go unused, too. Sometimes his mom or her family will beat me to the punch on a particularly special birthday or Christmas gift (in spite of a lot of effort on my part to coordinate that kind of thing), leaving me to scramble to replace it with whatever he wants second- or third-most. Some of his favorite things are at his mom's house, and he misses them when he's here. Same goes for my daughter. She's a little better at kind of understanding and accepting what divorce means, but she's still only 10, and it gets to her sometimes, too.
From a more selfish standpoint, when the kids aren't here, I'm often profoundly lonely. I grew up with both my parents and two little brothers and a bunch of pets; prior to the divorce, I was in a house with my wife, two kids, and another bunch of pets. Now I'm renting a small, kind of crappy house where I'm not allowed to have a pet, which means I am truly on my own much of the time for the first time in my life, at age 41. And when it's just me, I'll see things like my son's nightlight left on or my a drawing my daughter was in the middle of, and I'll just miss my kids like hell. I've sometimes found myself not cleaning up messes they've left with their toys when they're not here, just so it kind of feels like they're around. I see myself typing this out, and it's embarrassing...in any event, it just really, really hurts.
It doesn't help that I'm not in a position financially to enjoy some of the "silver linings" people often cite about divorce. COVID or no COVID, there is no recreational travel in my foreseeable future, and now that the UGA football walk-on I know has graduated, I'm going to be hard-pressed to afford to attend even one Georgia football game each season. My new job (I'm four months in) is 100% remote, which is overwhelmingly a mostly good thing, but I do miss the day-to-day in-person contact one can usually count on at work. I'm certainly not in a position to attract the kind of person I would want to date, and even if I did stumble across someone who looked past my circumstances, I can't afford to take anybody on dates. I really can't responsibly afford to order from restaurants myself, except as a very occasional splurge.
Could things be worse, from a practical standpoint? Of course. I'm reasonably healthy, I have a job, and at least I get my kids some of the time. And they love me as much as I love them. My daughter and I are really close, and my son has finally reached the age where he wants to be my little buddy all the time and do everything Daddy does. So I'm making the most of that -- at least as much as I can in the time I get with them.
But yeah, after the kids' birthdays (and my second Christmas away from them), I am acutely aware of how "off" this all is, and how much both the kids and I are missing out on. And there's truly nothing I can do about it. It's an awful, awful feeling, and I'm having a hard time finding ways to distract myself enough not to feel it a lot of the time lately. When I'm not working -- which I'm doing as much as possible, to keep myself occupied -- there's only so much TV I can watch and so much Vent I can browse.
Anyway...that's where I'm at. Those of you who are married, especially if you have kids, please take my word for it: it is imperative that you never take your spouse or family for granted, and that you constantly work as hard as it takes to maintain fully open lines of communication and respond to your spouse's needs. You don't want to end up where I am, even temporarily...and you REALLY don't want your kids to go through what mine have gone through. Beyond that, just be as present and involved in your kids' lives as you possibly can. I know it's often not the traditional "dad" thing to do -- a lot of us are, by nature, more focused on breadwinning and taking care of our families financially -- but our kids need us there emotionally, and they need time with us. Take every opportunity you get to take your little girl to the park or your son to the lake or both of them to Athens, even if it's not a game day. Volunteer at your kids' schools -- that stuff is REALLY rewarding, and it's well worth the trade-off to miss a couple of hours of work to show your kids that you're involved there.
To those who have read all this, I appreciate your time. I don't know that I'm necessarily looking for advice; I mostly just needed to vent. And again, I know how non-Dawg this is, and I apologize for that. Y'all take care, and as always, Go Dawgs.
-- 00 Dawg
Yes, this post is obscenely long. Feel free not to read it.
Before I get all this off my chest, I want to preface it, first by acknowledging how profoundly non-Dawg it is. It is my hope that since we're in the doldrums of the offseason, this might be as reasonable a time as any to post this here. If it's categorically not appropriate here, mods, please feel free to nuke it rather than move it to the Chat. I probably should also acknowledge that the kind of self-disclosure I'm about to make here has historically gotten a mixed reception on the Dawgvent, at best, but I'm frankly pretty immune to negative feedback on things like this. Many of you saw my posts when I was going through my divorce (in 2017-2018); if you read those, you have a pretty good idea what this post is going to look like. I suppose what I'm doing is just plain venting. Given how long I've been on this forum and the relationships I've formed here, the Vent is the best outlet I've got for that.
With that said, I'm struggling pretty badly right now. My daughter turned 10 at the end of December, and my son turned 6 this past Monday; their birthdays have really kind of thrown into sharp focus how much they and I are missing, post-divorce. I have historically been a very, very involved dad, and I've tried my best to maintain that since moving out in August 2018, but it's awfully hard to feel like Superdad when you're only with your kids an average of 3.5 nights a week (every Thursday night, and every other Friday through Sunday). I do everything I can to make the most of the time I get with the kids, but cramming a bunch of "quality time" into alternating weekends (and the three waking hours I get with them on Thursdays) is nowhere near the same as always being there for them.
Instead of the normal routine -- the one we all (including kids) see on TV and read about in books, the one my kids had for what is still most of their lives at this point -- knowing where they're going to sleep each night, family birthday celebrations, shared meals, and all those other very basic things I took for granted growing up; my kids get pieces of all that, which don't add up to a comfortable or coherent whole. Although the custody schedule is reliable, no 6-year-old is going to be able to remember "Because it's Thursday, it's a Daddy night, but tomorrow I'll be at Mommy's, and next week I'll be with Daddy Thursday through Sunday." My son wakes up literally every morning and does not know where he's going to go to bed that night; he invariably asks at some point each day. We've tried a lot of things, including using kid-friendly calendars that are supposed to help with this, but he's just too little to grasp it.
He's also too little to wrap his head around what divorce really means. Obviously, I've had my own house for two-and-a-half years now, and he recognizes that. But even after reading a lot of books about divorce with him, having multiple conversations about what divorce is, enlisting the help of his teachers and his friends' parents, he just can't fully comprehend it. Several months after I moved out, in the car on the way to school, he spontaneously told me "I hope you and Mommy remarry" [each other]. His sister started crying, and I had to use every ounce of strength not to lose it myself. This Valentine's Day, he made a card for "Mommy and Daddy," and he told me we could share it. Last weekend, my parents drove down from South Carolina and my brother came up from Midtown to celebrate Brendan's birthday a couple of days early. When my brother arrived, Brendan broke down crying; when I took him aside to help him calm down, he said "Everybody's here except Mommy." I wasn't what you would call a "cryer" before the divorce, but I'll be damned if things like that don't get to me.
Those are just a few particularly salient examples of the kinds of things Brendan says and does routinely, and I feel indescribably terrible even thinking about them. Hearing him ask every day where he's going to be sleeping that night may not be quite that heartbreaking, but it hurts every time. And God only knows what the cumulative effect of all this is ultimately going to be on him.
This morning, I threw away the uneaten half of a Batman birthday cake I got Brendan on Saturday. His mom made him another cake on Monday; half of that one will go unused, too. Sometimes his mom or her family will beat me to the punch on a particularly special birthday or Christmas gift (in spite of a lot of effort on my part to coordinate that kind of thing), leaving me to scramble to replace it with whatever he wants second- or third-most. Some of his favorite things are at his mom's house, and he misses them when he's here. Same goes for my daughter. She's a little better at kind of understanding and accepting what divorce means, but she's still only 10, and it gets to her sometimes, too.
From a more selfish standpoint, when the kids aren't here, I'm often profoundly lonely. I grew up with both my parents and two little brothers and a bunch of pets; prior to the divorce, I was in a house with my wife, two kids, and another bunch of pets. Now I'm renting a small, kind of crappy house where I'm not allowed to have a pet, which means I am truly on my own much of the time for the first time in my life, at age 41. And when it's just me, I'll see things like my son's nightlight left on or my a drawing my daughter was in the middle of, and I'll just miss my kids like hell. I've sometimes found myself not cleaning up messes they've left with their toys when they're not here, just so it kind of feels like they're around. I see myself typing this out, and it's embarrassing...in any event, it just really, really hurts.
It doesn't help that I'm not in a position financially to enjoy some of the "silver linings" people often cite about divorce. COVID or no COVID, there is no recreational travel in my foreseeable future, and now that the UGA football walk-on I know has graduated, I'm going to be hard-pressed to afford to attend even one Georgia football game each season. My new job (I'm four months in) is 100% remote, which is overwhelmingly a mostly good thing, but I do miss the day-to-day in-person contact one can usually count on at work. I'm certainly not in a position to attract the kind of person I would want to date, and even if I did stumble across someone who looked past my circumstances, I can't afford to take anybody on dates. I really can't responsibly afford to order from restaurants myself, except as a very occasional splurge.
Could things be worse, from a practical standpoint? Of course. I'm reasonably healthy, I have a job, and at least I get my kids some of the time. And they love me as much as I love them. My daughter and I are really close, and my son has finally reached the age where he wants to be my little buddy all the time and do everything Daddy does. So I'm making the most of that -- at least as much as I can in the time I get with them.
But yeah, after the kids' birthdays (and my second Christmas away from them), I am acutely aware of how "off" this all is, and how much both the kids and I are missing out on. And there's truly nothing I can do about it. It's an awful, awful feeling, and I'm having a hard time finding ways to distract myself enough not to feel it a lot of the time lately. When I'm not working -- which I'm doing as much as possible, to keep myself occupied -- there's only so much TV I can watch and so much Vent I can browse.
Anyway...that's where I'm at. Those of you who are married, especially if you have kids, please take my word for it: it is imperative that you never take your spouse or family for granted, and that you constantly work as hard as it takes to maintain fully open lines of communication and respond to your spouse's needs. You don't want to end up where I am, even temporarily...and you REALLY don't want your kids to go through what mine have gone through. Beyond that, just be as present and involved in your kids' lives as you possibly can. I know it's often not the traditional "dad" thing to do -- a lot of us are, by nature, more focused on breadwinning and taking care of our families financially -- but our kids need us there emotionally, and they need time with us. Take every opportunity you get to take your little girl to the park or your son to the lake or both of them to Athens, even if it's not a game day. Volunteer at your kids' schools -- that stuff is REALLY rewarding, and it's well worth the trade-off to miss a couple of hours of work to show your kids that you're involved there.
To those who have read all this, I appreciate your time. I don't know that I'm necessarily looking for advice; I mostly just needed to vent. And again, I know how non-Dawg this is, and I apologize for that. Y'all take care, and as always, Go Dawgs.
-- 00 Dawg
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