Complicated? Nope. Not at all.

Nobody tells you how extremely complicated kids are, but of course, they are just little people. The simple pleasures don’t last.

Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash

It was exactly one year ago that I talked to my daughter. The last time was her youngest son’s first birthday. He was sick in bed, and he probably didn't miss Grandpa’s call too much, since he really doesn't know who I am anyway, which was part of our conversation today.

After we got the usual things covered — kids, husband, mother-in-law, other side of the family — we got into the weeds about my absence in her (and my older son’s) life. Because of the acrimony in the relationship with her mom (which probably contributed to the distance that I put between me and her, and by proxy the children), I rarely ever speak of her, and certainly not TO her.

It was during a tumultuous time in which I suffered (what I now know was) a post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) episode, their mother decided it would be a good idea to start fucking my coworker, and leave me. All in all, it's the old story.

She had been previously destabilized/traumatized after a miscarriage, and I worked a lot which did not help things. I was simply unable to communicate because of the issues that surrounded my childhood, and regrettably, affected all of my relationships, kids included. So when my daughter brought up the subject of the distance that I had put between her between us when she was young, and again upon my retirement (I moved six-thousand miles away), she made it clear this was something that deeply affected her, in her childhood and adult life. She felt abandoned by me, even though that was not my intention.

I think that when we've been through something that's so emotionally traumatizing as the infidelity of another spouse (it was not the first time she cheated), and add to that an identical experience from a previous marriage, leaving the circumstance/location behind is just the easiest way to stop that pain.

Now mind you I don't think that there's any excuse that I can give, except for the fact that I needed that space to take care of myself, and to be able to reconstruct my life. Not knowing the degree of my PTSD at the time, I could not understand the role that I had in my own psychological issues. I was now, as an adult, feeling my own loss, the same thing that my daughter and son were living.

Lost? Well, hang on. It’s all about the repetition of our parents’ mistakes, which I did not want to do, but still did.

Despite the fact that I tried to be better to them than my father was to me, it's impossible to bridge the physical distance, even if we saw each other five-to-six weeks a year — if we were lucky. I had zero ill intent, but I needed to leave that painful place.

I was then still living in the marital house, but everything about it caused me immense distress, and I simply couldn't see how I was going to be able to put all of that aside in order to begin a new life. I was offered a job two-thousand miles away with better money, and possibility for advancement. With the agreement from my ex-wife that we would work out visitation and travel, I took it. Never in my wildest imagination did I have a clue that this would turn out to be a rotten apple.

I was completely floored when my daughter dropped this little nugget in my lap, but how do you apologize for something like that? Something from 1997?

I suppose in some way I could tell her about my bouts of PTSD, my immense depression (that even I had no idea about), and the fact that everything to do with work and home were extremely toxic. In fact, the only things that weren't toxic were my new girlfriend (my wife now), and my kids. Those were the only times I really looked forward to anything.

I was reconstructing something within myself, and I simply couldn't see how it was going to work if I was still in that house. So I left it all behind — kids included. I tried to call them at least once a week to see how they were — to check on them — but it just wasn't enough. And that's what my daughter told me — point blank.

When I moved out of the country (for my daughter), it was just a reminder of when I moved to California; I was just leaving things behind to start over fresh.

I was, but not the way she viewed it. Obviously, with all of that being almost thirty years ago, it's very impossible to understand how my actions were mistakenly understood as a selfish act.

Photo by Tetiana Bykovets on Unsplash

When I'm immensely upset like this, when I get that sinking feeling in my body, the only thing that's gonna make it feel better is something sweet, which is why it's so hard to kill my food addiction. I don't wanna be a fat bastard anymore, but I can't seem to break out of the funk that holds me there. Right now, despite the fact that I'm doing meaningful things in my waking hours, my life revolves around sleep. My bedtime is between ten and eleven at night, my sleep time between eleven-thirty and eight 8 o'clock in the morning, and a nap, generally between two and three in the afternoon.

And that's how I know I'm still depressed.