Staying Even When You Want To Leave

It's 6:30 AM on July 19, 2017.

I'm sitting in my kitchen, getting ready to go to work. 

I've been contemplating this return to writing here on my blog. I haven't written nearly as much as I used to and almost nothing in recent years. So much has happened. I considered, at one point, deleting this blog. I thought maybe it had run it's course. But every day I get hits. 20, 30, 50...

Every day, a large number of dads stumble across this page in their sorrow and sadness and find some measure of peace. 

There is a pattern. I get the heaviest traffic on Sunday nights and Mondays. I know exactly why. That's the day most of us take our kids back to their mother's and we are alone again. Mondays are the first day we wake up without them after a weekend visit. The pain is crushing. 

I lived that way for 15 years. My daughter was only 18 months old when we divorced and I spent her entire childhood, rebounding from the pain of every-other-weekend fatherhood. 

I watched as her life disintegrated because of her mother's second marriage. I rescued her many times from the clutches of the animal her mom was married to. 

In 2008 I lost my career and then my home when the economy collapsed. Because her life was in such turmoil, I could not leave to find work. I had to stay in Nashville. So I stayed. That meat living in my car. I was homeless for 6 years, until 2014 when I was hired by my alma mater and my daughter moved here with me.

A lot of damage was done. She went from age ten to age 16 without her dad having a place to live. We lost our weekends together. I saw her during the week, and I'd pick her up on a Saturday to spend a few hours, but it wasn't the same. It hurt like nothing I can describe. But I stayed.

I stayed and I endured that horror because she needed me. 

I know there are a lot of guys reading this who are in the same boat. I know there are others who could not handle the disappointment and chose to leave. I know there are some reading this article this morning who are on the brink...you are facing divorce and you think the best thing is to just walk away. There are others who are like I was...so broken and crushed that you wonder how you're going to make it through another day. The pain from missing your kids is so great and your life feels so empty without them, that you consider not living at all. 

To those men I say, "Hold on." Even through tears, even through disappointment and mistreatment by your ex and by the courts and sometimes by your kids. Hold on. My daughter wasn't always aware of my sacrifices when I was making them, but she is now. Hold on.

There is hope. You can make it. There is a God in heaven who loves you. He sees your tears and feels the pain you feel. I have no secrets to how I endured six years of homelessness for the sake of my daughter except this...only my faith in Jesus Christ got me through. There were nights I considered just letting myself freeze to death. Or buying a bottle and drinking myself blind and letting myself die. But my faith sustained me. It wasn't pretty. I cried all the same tears. I suffered the same broken heart. But I did not suffer alone. Jesus walked each painful step.

Dads...do not give up. Do. Not. Give. Up. Find yourself in the faith I speak of here. Lean on the God who adores you and wants to help you through this. He loves you. He loves your children. 

Trust Him to give you the strength to stay till the end.

You are loved. 

You are still the daddy.

Craig

Updates...

Hi fellas,
It's been awhile since I've written anything, and even longer since I've been consistent i posting here.
I apologize. For those of you who don't know, I spent six years -from 2008 until 2014- homeless. I lost my job in the economic crash and then I lost my home. I stayed in Nashville, where we lived at the time, because I refused to give up my fatherhood. That required me to sleep in my car.
There is a lot to that story, but I won't recap all 6 years here in one post.
Suffice to say, it was hard to be regular here on this blog. I've been settled here in Virginia for three years now. Life is slowly returning to normal. My daughter is here and she's recovering from the crap her mother's second ex husband put her through. I have a good job and I'm rebuilding.
It was hard to survive all that, so you can imagine that it was hard to write very much content for this blog. But with things at least a little more "normal" now, I am determined to resume this blog and get back to helping the guys out there who have been wounded in this war.
I recently released a new book, chronicling the six years I spent homeless. It's entitled: "Nowhere to lay my Head: The True Story of a Homeless Dad." You can buy it HERE  It's a very emotional read, but it encourages you not to quit.
I may resume the radio show in the future, if things shake out. In the meantime, I plan on expanding this site to include more resources for dads like us.
Never quit, men...never, ever, quit.
Craig

A Divorced Dad At Christmas: "It Wasn't Supposed to be This Way.."

Hey fellas,
It's been over a year since I've posted anything new. I apologize for that.
I am going to try to be better about posting here more often. I know a lot of men come here for some guidance and friendship in what is the most miserably damning thing that can happen to a dad...the separation from our kids.
The holidays are especially hard on us and even after seventeen years, I am not yet immune to their wounding. I wrote this on Sunday, thought I'd post it today.

It’s been a long weekend and I’m tired but my mind is whirling.

It was great to get home and see family. It was great to have my daughter for Thanksgiving and see her light up at the Christmas display at Longwood Gardens. She’s had a tough year and I worried that Christmas wouldn’t hold it’s usual magic for her.

But this trip home, while always good be home with family, was hard for me as well.

Maybe it’s because I’m currently writing this new book about being homeless and it’s all right there just beneath my skin. Or maybe it’s just that so many years have gone by now that I am finally feeling some things that I should have felt years ago.

Or maybe it’s that I’m not homeless anymore and that means I’ve finally stopped living on adrenaline, and I’m feeling where I used to be numb. I don’t know.

But whatever the reason or reasons, I am in turmoil tonight. I have been all weekend.

This Thursday will be December 1. This is the 17th anniversary of my divorce.

On Thursday December 1, 1999, at about 2pm, I walked out of Fourth Circuit court in Nashville, TN into a bright, brilliant blue Winter afternoon. And I wasn’t married anymore.

I left the courthouse feeling like I didn’t even know which direction to point my car. I was utterly lost. Three years of my life had been spent being a husband and two of them as a father. It was all I wanted. I was just hitting my stride in my new career, I was learning the ropes and finally making a few dollars. Just as I was feeling like a real husband, it was over.

Seventeen years.

I spent the first three years grieving my wife. I missed her terribly. I wept almost daily. I was hollow. My eyes were empty. But eventually I moved on. I let go of her as the ideal of a wife. (Looking back, it’s amazing I grieved a second. They say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s ambivalence and I am more ambivalent toward her than any human on earth) But I grieved my marriage for four more years. I loved being married. I loved wearing a ring and having someone to come home to at night or to call with an explanation if I was going to be late. I loved having a reason to pursue success and to dream big. I loved that my daughter had a home with both parents. I loved talking about the future (on the good days) and planning for better things.

I grieved this for years after I was over my wife. I wore my wedding ring for two years after the divorce, not in some outlandish hopes she would come back, but because I liked the way it felt to wear a wedding ring.

I got past that in 2004 when I bought my second house. It was really me and it gave me something to hold to and to put my heart into and it went a long way toward helping me move on.

Then came 2008. Then came collapse, and homelessness and the rest.

During those years, the thoughts of a wife and a home were as far removed as could be from the reality I was living. I wasn’t looking, I never frequented places where I might have met someone, and even if I did, what was I going to say; “Hi, I’m homeless, but I promise I’m still a catch?” I retreated into the relative safety of the four walls of my own heart. It was lonely there but safe. I didn’t realize how lonely it was until I tried to emerge from it two and a half years ago. When I moved to Virginia and got a job and re-entered the workforce and found myself interacting with other humans on a daily basis…it took some getting used to. I had grown used to isolation. My rough edges had gotten rougher in the void of homelessness, with no one to wear them down. I was a bit out of square. It took a few months for me to regain trust in humanity and a comfort level with new faces.

Still, in all this I didn’t think about this emptiness in my heart. I think it’s because I truly didn’t feel it. If I did, I blocked it so perfectly that until this week I never suspected it at all. But I was empty. I am empty. This weekend it was in full view.

I went home again for Thanksgiving. Home. I keep using that word here but it doesn’t feel right. It is my home in the sense that I was born there and grew up there and most of the best memories of my life were created there. As a physical location it is my home and always will be. It remains dear to me, even though I doubt I could return and live there, for the sad reason that the neighborhoods have declined so badly that I could never feel safe.

But it’s not my home in the emotional sense of the word. I saw and felt that this weekend. Once again, I was part of someone else‘s holiday. Someone else's Thanksgiving table. Someone let me tag along on their traditions. I am grateful. I am thankful that I have people who love me and, even though I am not “blood,” they consider me family. And I am thankful for actual family who always holds their door open for me when I am in town.

But it wasn’t always going to be this way.

It was going to be different by now. I was going to be celebrating in my home, with my children, and my wife. We would feel the stress as we cleaned and prepared the house for guests. As Christmas music played while we cooked for an army of visitors. As we joked about each other’s parents, and while we acted like it was a huge pain, we secretly would not have it any other way, and we both knew that. Our kids would be getting excited. The tree would go up. The lights would be lit. The Christmas spirit would sweep down on us like a Nor’easter, and we’d savor every breeze.

There’d be secret shopping trips where I found just the right gifts for the woman I planned on spending every moment with until we were all out of moments. Perfect gifts that, regardless of price, told her that I had thought a lot about these items, that I really knew her, and that I’d picked just exactly these things because I knew without question that she would love them. And when she opened them, and when she saw the thought and care that went into their selection…I would be proven right. She would love them. And she would smile at me, and I would know what that smile meant… “You really do know me. You see me. You’ve been paying attention. You love me.” I would open gifts as well and they’d mean that someone really cared at Christmas. My kids, my wife, they all wanted to find something that I would really love, because they wanted to show me that what I love matters to them. That’s really why we give presents anyway.

Family would come to see us. Instead of being a vagabond at every holiday like I have been for most of my life (long before marriage and divorce) our home would be the fixed point on the compass. The place where friends and family just had to be, if only for a little while, during the Holidays. Ours was the “Christmas House” and our friends and neighbors knew it. It would be a tradition, and eventually, for those we loved, they would come to feel that “It just wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t stop to see the Daliessio’s.”

As our kids grew there would be new faces joining us. Boyfriends and girlfriends who became fiancés, then sons and daughter’s in law. The circle would grow larger and remain unbroken.

But that’s not how it turned out. This hasn’t happened for me and I doubt now that it will. I let 17 years slip by before I knew it. I don’t know why. I don’t know if she’s out there, yet to be met, or if I met her and didn’t realize it. Or is she got away, or if I’m simply not going to meet her. But I wish I had.

I am old fashioned. I am a romantic. I longed to sit in my living room with my wife, looking at the tree and all the presents in the late night quiet of Christmas Eve after the guests had left and the kids were trying hard to sleep and we had just a few minutes together alone. I wanted to surprise her with a gift that she’d wanted but thought I’d forgotten. I wanted to make memories. I wanted to be someone’s hero. I wanted to see her as we watched the kids opening presents on Christmas morning and watch her take it all in and catch her eye as she glances at me with a smile that says; “I’m so glad to be here with you. I’m glad were in this together.”

That’s what I married for. That’s what I lost seventeen years ago, this Thursday. That’s what I kept seeing this weekend as we went home.

Now here I am wondering if these scenes will ever play out anywhere but in my heart. Wondering if I will simply walk to the end of my road without anyone watching to see how I did it, to remind me if I did it well, and to be there for the reckoning.

I wanted a home full of happiness and joy and festivity. I might well have missed it. That makes me sad, because there aren’t a lot of hearts like mine left in the world. I don’t say that to boast, I just know how the world is. My romantic, old fashioned, knight-in-shining-armor belief system is antiquated. I’m a relic. But I don’t want to be. I want to matter to someone. To some one. I want to fight for her dreams, cheer for her goals, encourage her in her hardships, and lend her my strength when she feels her’s running out. I want her to look back at life and say “I could have done this without you…but I’m so thankful I didn’t have to.”

I want to go home for Christmas. 

The Big Lies about Dads

I haven't written in a while and for that I apologize. I have been busy. There is a new book in the works and some other new irons in the fire. But I sure haven't forgotten you dads.
I have been reading the emails and comments I receive here on an almost daily basis. My heart aches for you guys. I recently reconnected with a dear friend from high school who has one of the most excruciating and horrifying stories about the frustrations that dads feel when their fatherhood is not protected.
I can't relate it here because it is too lengthy. But his life was irreversibly damaged by the torture of a very evil woman with whom he had a child, and even more so by a single decision he made that altered his life forever.
People think that men don't hurt. They think we don't cry over our kids. That this life is somehow easier for us. That we don't really care about the time we miss with them. Not really. They think we don't grieve this loss and lay awake at night missing our children. They think we can somehow adapt to this life better than women can. That we are all deadbeats. That visitation and time with your kids and influencing them is of no value to us. They could not be more wrong.
I can't count the number of nights I lay awake crying over the hurt I felt missing my daughter. How many times I would call her just to hear her voice for five minutes. How many times I would watch the VHS tapes of her 3rd birthday party or our trips to the beach together. I would sit in her bedroom at night and close my eyes and feel her there. I poured out my tear-filled prayers from beside her bed, because my heart told me that if she had been, it was there that I'd be praying those prayers anyway. It made me feel more connected to her I guess.
Dads hurt as much or more than moms do. Deadbeats and malcontents get the press and the starring role in movies on Lifetime, but those images are a lie. Like all the other lies told about us.
Be strong dads. The lies become true only if we decide to live up to them.

Have I done Everything?

Remember the movie "Rudy"? Sure you do. Remember the scene where Rudy has endured three semesters of Junior College, overcome a learning disability, slept in a store room, and worked three jobs just to stay there, and he still has been turned down for Notre Dame? He sits in the church sanctuary waiting for Father Cavanaugh. When the Father comes walking up the aisle with some other priests, he sees a despondent Rudy and stops to talk to him. After a few moments of conversation, Rudy asks Father Cavanaugh "Have I prayed enough?" To which Father Cavanaugh smilingly replies "I'm sure that's not the problem." Then Rudy desperately asks him "Have I done everything I could do?".  Father Cavanaugh's response, as I recall, was "I think that's a question only you can answer."
As a post-divorce dad I ask myself the same things constantly. "Have I prayed enough for my daughter? Have I poured out my heart to God on her behalf with the frequency, earnestness, sincerity, and desperation of a loving daddy who can't always be there to protect, defend, encourage, train, and love?" I know the answer is yes but I still struggle. I still wrestle in the days between visits and between interactions. I rely on the phone and the email and text to fill in the blank spots in my heart. It's seldom enough.
Almost daily I am introspective and ask myself  "Is there anything else I can do?" I suppose if Father Cavanaugh were here, his response would be the same..."Only you can answer that question."
I know there is little I can do beyond what I have done. But that is the problem.  I'm a dad. All the time. I shouldn't have to meter out my fatherhood in bits and pieces and moments. There is no natural ebb and flow to my time with my daughter. It is staccato, like a machine gun. Big bursts, followed by long silence. This is unnatural and painful. I am a "Full-Time Daddy in a Part-time world" and it hurts.
But I have done all I can and then some. So I rely on the One who loves my daughter even more than I do. When I miss her, long for her company, worry about her, or spend a little longer thinking about how it once was...I take comfort in prayer. I package up my hurts and the emptiness that I feel in between days with her and I drop them at the feet of the only One who loves her more.
After 13 years I have learned that He is always on the job and He truly wants what is best for her.
Dad's...ask yourself those two urgent questions; "Have I prayed enough?" and "Have I done everything I can do?" Answer them honestly, fix what needs fixing, and then trust that God will honor your heart and watch over your kids.
Your friend,
Craig