Part 1:

Coming in to 2009 I was on top of the world.  Married, had a baby daughter, owned a house, was just finishing up school and my career was going to take off.  It was pretty much the old American dream I used to hear about when I was a kid.  Minus the white picket fence, but only because we owned a townhouse.  It was 2009, after all, and the housing bubble had just burst, but homes were still crazy expensive in my area just outside of Washington DC.

Fast forward to September 15, 2009, and it was like a shift in the San Andreas Faultline.  That was when the first crack in my marriage presented itself.  Well, presented itself out in the open.  I’m not going to go into the details because they aren’t that important to the story at this point.  I knew that things were probably irreparable, but I held out hope.  Maybe we can work it out?  Skip ahead 10 days to September 25, 2009 and that was it.  It was over.  We agreed to split and that was the point of no return.  It wasn’t something that could not be fixed. 

It was kind of strange because I felt a huge wave of relief that day when things ended.  Deep down I knew that if we decided to work it out, it was going to be a long road back and a lot of changes would have to be made.  Trust would have to be rebuilt.  The idea of all that was just emotionally and mentally draining to me.  That’s right, without putting any work in, the thought of it was draining.  I was wracked with so much doubt about whether it was even worth it.  Of course, I also learned in therapy that I wasn’t happy in the marriage either, but over the years I’ve been able to put things in perspective and see that it wouldn’t have been worth it.  Neither of us was happy and there was no amount of counseling or “date nights” that was going to fix that.  At the end of the day, the relationship had lost all spark.  To take it even further, we never really had that “connection” that successful relationships have.  Perhaps if we did, things could have been fixed, but we didn’t, so whether it was that day in 2009 or years later, things would have ended at some point.  We just weren’t a good fit.

I still remember the early days of being separated.  My ex-wife didn’t really work.  She bar tended a couple of nights a week, but that was it.  My days and weeks became a 40-hour work week in the office and then take our daughter.  This was after work and every weekend at first.  Once we separated, my ex-wife basically moved out of our house.  She would either come in super late at night while my daughter and I were asleep and crash in a spare room, or she’d come over right when I was about to head to work in the morning.  When I’d get home, we’d talk briefly about how the day with the kiddo was, then she’d head off as quickly as possible.  That was my life for the first few months.  After a while we started talking about custody arrangements and things changed again, but that’s another story for another time….   

Adjusting to everything falling apart and trying to raise a 1-and-a-half-year-old girl was brutal.  Emotionally I was a wreck.  There was therapy and antidepressants.  Looking back on it now, the pharmaceutical cocktail they had me on was ridiculous.  I was depressed, anxious, and I swear I didn’t get more than 2 hours of sleep a night for the first two weeks.  The shrink I went to had me on two types of anti-depressants (Zoloft which made me sleepy and wellbutrin which picked me up) and klonapin to help me sleep.  Oh, and I was also in therapy too.  I don’t know what else to say other than it was a very dark time.  Now, I was never suicidal.  For one, I would never kill myself, especially not over 1 failed relationship.  Two, my daughter was my world and I wasn’t going to leave her.

I made a conscious decision early on that no matter what I was going through, my daughter was always going to be my focus and every decision I would make would have her best interests in mind.  I’m depressed and don’t want to get out of bed today?  Too bad, I have a toddler that needs me.  Get up and be a dad.  Hate my ex-wife and my circumstances?  Too bad, the only thing that matters is that my daughter is taken care of and she is cared for and loved.  And that included not saying anything negative about my ex-wife in the presence of my mom and also censoring friends/family if they started in on the negative talk about her when the kid was around.  I think part of what helped me get through things was just putting my daughter’s best interests first.  Sure, her mom and I had issues to iron out, but as long as my daughter’s best interests were the focal point, I figured I would make the right choices. 

For the most part I kept her as shielded from things as I could, but there were times I broke down in front of her.  She was young enough that she doesn’t remember now, but it happened.  When you have a breakup with your girlfriend, or she breaks up with you, you can just sever all ties.  Go your separate ways and call it a day.  When you have a kid and you’re married, that’s another story.  The child is a constant reminder of a potential life that was never fully realized.  A reminder of a future that will never take place.  It’s through this lens that you see why some single parents have issues with their children when the other parent splits.  They can’t deal with the constant reminder, and it leads to the parent taking it out on the child, even though it isn’t the child’s fault.  I never struggled with that, but I understand and have compassion for those that have.

Part 2:

Now on to what happens when you don’t start.  Well, newsflash, nothing happens if you don’t start it.  Almost immediately after separating from my wife, I dove in head-first to self-improvement.  For a grand total of about six months.  I used the emotional pain to fuel me.  I got back in the gym and lost about 30 pounds.  I started reading self-improvement books.  I went to therapy to learn to heal the pain of the separation as well as any other deep-rooted issues I had going on.  I was going to turn my life around!  The problem was I didn’t really have any real motivation other than the pain.  It was a great spark to start, but once I started to deal with my emotions and rediscover myself, that spark faded.  I think deep down I thought that if I made all these improvements, my ex-wife would see the changes and beg me to try and get back together.  That never happened.  Eventually the pain started to lessen and reality set in.  It was over.  She wasn’t coming back.  If she did, would I really want her back after all that had taken place?  No.  It would have been a huge mistake.  Now that the pain was leaving my motivation for improvement was leaving too.    

As that spark faded, so did my will do anything of any significance.  My weight ballooned back up and I just became more depressed and defeated.  I tried to find groups for single dads near me, but there was nothing.  None of my friends were divorced or single parents, so they couldn’t really relate.  They were great to me during my down period.  They were always there for me.  I’ll be truly grateful to all of them for the rest of my life.  If not for them, I wouldn’t have made it through the tough times.  But still, it bugged me there was no community or groups or programs for single dads that I could find.  Nobody to get together with going through similar struggles. 

So, I had this great idea that I would try and start an online community or, if I was lucky, set it up locally.  It was a brilliant idea to me.  It wasn’t being done yet, and I could start it.  This was before Instagram and twitter was still new.  I could start a blog and figure out a way to drive traffic and organize a community of single dads.  A community where we could share our struggles and lean on each other.  So, I set up a page on wordpress and I made my first post.  And that was it.  I never posted again.  As good as the idea seemed to me, my ego went in to overdrive to shoot it down.  You see, I never addressed the feelings of zero self-worth from the separation.  My self-esteem was crushed, and I had zero confidence.  It was easy to talk myself out of anything because I didn’t think I was worthy of anything good or worthy of any success.  

And that was really it.  I had the idea, but I was always waiting for something before I got serious about it.  Waiting for motivation.  Waiting for the perfect time.  Waiting for more experience.  What I was waiting for was to just take that first step and get moving.  That’s really it.  All I ever needed to do was take that first step.  At the time of this writing it’s been slightly over 10 years since I first thought of my idea.  That’s 10 years I could have spent building what I thought single dads needed.  10 years of writing experience I could have had.  10 years of building an audience, a platform, and a voice.  And it’s gone now.  10 FULL years.  Sure, I grew and learned a lot over these last 10 years.  But I basically just “existed” for those 10 years.  I became a corporate drone with a daughter.  I settled on that as what the rest of my life would look like.  I had no real sense of purpose, other than being a dad and putting food on the table.  I don’t say that to talk down on anyone either.  If you are being a good parent and supporting your children, then you deserve immense credit!  I just want more.  I want to do more with my life.  I want to help other single parents NOT to get stuck in the same rut I was in.  I want them to see there is hope and a light at the end of the tunnel.  That you can dust off your dreams and kick ass and rebuild. 

At the end of 2018, I decided I wasn’t going to wait anymore.  Not for the perfect time, which just so happened to be the day I started to turn myself around (coincidence?  Nope, I just took the first step).  I’m not going to wait for the motivation.  I’m going to replace “motivation” with “discipline”.  I had ballooned up to over 240 lb’s.  My career was stagnant with no signs of real growth on the horizon.  I was in a relationship that wasn’t right for me, but I was scared to let go because I didn’t want to be alone.  Something clicked after that relationship ended and I reached my breaking point.  I was tired of underachieving.  Tired of the status quo and just existing.  So, I decided to lose weight and get a promotion.  I did both of those this year and through those two things I learned a lot about myself and life and why you just need to start something, anything, to get out of your rut.  Don’t think, just start.   

What vision do you have for yourself?  What are you passionate about?  What are your goals and dreams?  What does reaching all of those goals have in common?  Starting down a path!  Now is the time to turn it all around.  It’s never too late.  It’s never too early.  There is never a perfect time to start.  There is never a bad time to start.  Don’t wait for motivation.  Just start.  So, I did that and I’m hoping that I can show anyone who might come across this blog what you/we are capable of if we just get moving.  I believe that if you just take the first step, it will build the momentum needed to get where you want to go.  Just take that first step today.  Then tomorrow, take that first step again.  The day after, do it again.  You just keep taking that first step every day, until your default action is just that, taking action.  As this is what I believe, I’m going to show all those who will follow me how it turns out.  Nothing is a bigger motivator that proof, right?  You can find mine here and on IG: @singlefatherreboot.  I’m also of the mindset that “pictures or it didn’t happen….”….