That's Where the Retardation Begins

Last week, my oldest child threatened suicide. Child #1 is a few months shy of being 15.

When I started this blog, I was on the road, Boston I think. At that point, Child #1 had not spoken to me in several months, stopped coming to the house, would barely speak to me when I made my quarterly phone call to see if anything was forgiven yet. Being on the road so much made it easier for me to ball all of the daily guilt up and pack it away somewhere that the National Safety Administration couldn't find during the numerous bosy cavity searches I was subject to.

Throughout my adult life, I believed that even if I failed at everything else, I would always be a good father. In 2002, less than a year after 9/11, and while dealing with a second major flare up of multiple sclerosis, I began the long painful process of leaving one family to start another.

Wife #1 (who was, by that time, also wife #2) made certain that the process was a loud, long, painful, public matter. Though we never honestly discussed the matter, I suspect her point was to visit upon me the same time of pain and shame I was visiting upon her. The difference was, she decided to use and abuse the very legal system I worked in an attempt to take my children away from me, tried to make me look like a thief, a liar, and a deadbeat. I was accused of having secret bank accounts, having affairs for years, hiding assets. I cared little about those things. Fresh out of law school, having grown up in a series of mobile homes, the only assets we had were a set of Ginsu knives, and the new VCR I bought when we had been remarried.

The apparently accepted manipulation of the legal system to aid in the attempt to take my kids away, that bothered me immensly. It changed the way I view many things not the least of which include my job, the courts, and my colleagues who make their money jacking with other people's kids. The harder I tried to do good and be a "suitable parent", the more it backfired.

Once the divorce was finally, thankfully completed, I tried to get on with the business of putting my relationship with my kids back together. Unfortunately, at the same time, I was also trying to establish new relationships with new kids and shortly a new wife. For a short time I worked a few weekends as a security guard just to buy groceries.

During the summer, I was moving stuff across town from an apartment to a rent house. Wife #3, was just home from the hospital after we had our first child together. The office was calling wanting to know when the hell I was coming back to work. I was seriously unhinged as a person, apparently useless as a father. I let the outside stressors build up, and vented my frustrations on my family. It was the last straw for Child #1. She never came back.

For a long time, she blamed it on Wife #3, the new kids, she lashed out at anything and everything. That was 2 years ago.

When I started the blog, I was searching for some public persona that would allow me to feel normal for a bit. It was no longer normal to carry on the types of conversations that people do when first meeting. Waddya do, have kids, how many...? I felt as though I carried a scarlet "Asshole" sewn on my clothes, as though everyone knew I had a child that hated me. That was the inspiration for the name of this blog. New wife, new kids, new job responsibilities all required that I keep functioning. But inside I was dead, or at least starting to flatline. I kept believing that Child #1 would come around, certainly that is what everyone kept telling me.

Child #2, seeing the upside to familial chaos, is now following suit. The day that Child #1 was coming home from the facility Child#1 spent the better part of the week in, Child #2 called to ask me how to get new music on Child #2's Ipod. Child #2 hasn't been here in 2 months. 10 minutes into the call, I had to interrupt Child 2 to see when Child 1 was coming home. I also finally asked Child 2 about summer vacation. Yeah, a week long trip to Seattle sounds cool, but no I don't want to spend the summer with you.

Child 1 is home now, and finally getting the counseling that has been so sorely needed the last 2 years. Mom had decided the Child 1 didn't have to go to counseling unless, at the child's discretion, it was necessary. And I am the piss poor parent. Just incredible.

Children 1 and 2 will call me when they are ready to have a relationship. They will call me when the Ipod is broken.

The job has new requirements. I have to start building a name, a reputation, and a book of business of my own. As more and more companies resort to bankruptcy, and more non-bankruptcy litigators get in on the game, it truly is becoming a mercenary-staffed battlefield of suicidal clients and assassin litigators. I hate the job, but I do so love the work.

The time for my apologies has passed, the retributions will, undoubtedly, be lifelong. My failure as a father, and as a man, have stripped away any value I may have represented to my children. To complete strangers, my time is worth $250 an hour. I don't get much of the $250, but enough to buy some more Ipods as time goes on.

If you think I'm an asshole now, just wait till you see me as... Formerly Living.