Confession

There was once a time in my life where everything seemed to be going my way; I lived in a gorgeous apartment in a ritzy part of town, drove a shiny BMW, had a beautiful girlfriend and more work than I knew what to do with. On the outside, things seemed to be perfect. On the inside, my soul told a very different story.

It wasn’t hard for me to impress others with my skill sets or knowledge about complex subjects and seemingly-savvy business sense. Physically, I was a tank of a man and could rep other guys PR’s at the gym with ease. However, there was a startling difference between the man I appeared to be and the lost boy that I felt inside.

There are a lot of traumas that occur in our lives, which present themselves in different ways. There are micro-traumas, like somebody making a critical comment about your appearance at a young age. There are also heavy traumas, like getting a phone call and hearing your Dad has terminal cancer, at a time when you needed him the most in your life. I’ve experienced both of these, and have had enough micro-traumas to fill a storage unit with.

Throughout the years, I’ve developed a habit of telling others I’m fine – or appearing to be so. Inside, I knew that ‘fine’ stood for ‘feeling insecure, needy…emotional’.  To cover up these insecurities, I’d do my best to run from them, buy things or even put on the appearance of being ok. These little fixes I applied were akin to spraying bleach on mold; it gets rid of the surface-level mold, while leaving the roots untouched.

A decade ago, I remember driving out to Fort Worth to pick up the biggest check of my life. At the time, I sincerely felt as if I had somehow ‘made it’ and that my problems were over – not because I had dealt with them, but because I thought that I finally had enough money to glaze over them – and I tried. It didn’t work.

What followed was a nose-dive into non-stop partying, spending binges and toxic encounters with women that left me feeling more incomplete than when I first said hello.

There was a period of time where days felt like weeks, and weeks passed by like days. It was one of the worst chapters of my entire life. It came to an abrupt pause one morning when I woke up and stared at the high concrete ceiling in my apartment. Still buzzed from the night before, I stumbled into the bathroom and held onto the counter as I look in the mirror.

I didn’t recognize who I saw, and it scared the shit out of me. I’ll never forget the events that followed that morning as I ran from my bathroom and ran to the front door of my apartment to grab a dog leash, and I wasn’t going to take my dog for a walk.

For the next ten years, I ran from what I was about to do that morning. I moved cities, got a job (or two) and leaned into a cycle of even more destructive behavior. Behind the brick wall I was building around myself, there was a little ‘me’ on the inside that wanted to cry and scream, but didn’t have any tears left.

If I’m honest with myself and you – the reader – not much has changed in my life since that morning. I’ve simply gotten better at both masking my pain and running from doing something about it – for better or for worse.

Circumstances in my life have changed as well. Now, I’m a single Dad. I put down roots and do my best to maintain a house, life and business. I’ve also kept running from dealing with how I feel.

How do I feel? Lost. Alone. Dad’less. Unlovable. Broken. Imperfect. Tired. Beat down. Anxious. Abused. Devastated. Burnt out. Behind. Guilty. Incomplete.  I carry all of these things while doing my best to be a good Dad for Atlas, provide for his wants and needs and give him what he needs most in life right now; his Dad.

For the last two days that I’ve been with him, I’ve felt like everything came to a head. Imagine parenting a five year-old while choking down an anxiety attack that wanted to let itself out of the cage. It wasn’t just hard, it was impossibly hard.

On the second night we had together, I got him ready for bed and tucked him in. As he was falling asleep, I pulled out my iPad and began to write another chapter in his book. The light must have woken him up, because he asked me:

“Dad, what are you doing?”

“Atlas, I’m writing in your book.”

“Why?”

“Because, someday when you’re old enough to read it, I want you to know how much I love you.”

“I know you love me.”

His words stunned me. I closed my iPad and asked him if I could “come in for a cuddle”, to which he lovingly opened up his arms and I put my head down on his chest as he squeezed me. Listening to his heartbeat, I thanked God for how wonderful it is to be a Dad. His Dad.

After dropping him off in the morning, I went to meet with a counsellor at a coffeeshop. He listened as I spoke, before offering my advice on how to manage some of the broken parts in my life; words that hit home like .223’s at full auto. As I went home, I realized that healing isn’t something that can happen overnight. Rather, it’s a long, painful process that involves purging a lot of things and handing them over to God.

In some ways, that’s what this entry is; my own purging of how I feel every day, and a transparent look at what is hidden behind the smile. It’s brokeness. However, we aren’t made whole by sweeping our broken parts under the rug, we’re made whole when we decided its time to mend them – and in some cases, throw them back into the fire so they can be renewed.