I feel sick today

I am being eaten away inside. I miss my boys. I miss them. I don't feel like a father anymore. There is a big photo of the boys that was taken about a year and a half ago. There are photos of the boys all over the house. I guess I put them there because they are all I have when the boys are not with me. Photos of happy times. There is this one picture that was taken on Andy's birthday.. he is smiling.. so happy.. oblivious to all that goes on with the divorce. Andy used to not know when he had to go back to his mothers and he would cry when he left me. Alex has always known.. he is the monitor.. when the clock nears the time for us to leave, he reminds me.. he tells me that he doesn't want to be late. There is a picture in the bathroom.. the boys with their cousins in Pinetop, sitting on some rocks with a little waterfall cascading around them. They have natural beautiful smiles. There is a picture of Alex with his arms around his cousins and Andy on the edge of the bench with his thumb in his mouth.. tears rolling down his cheek. He didn't want to have his picture taken.

Pictures and toys and birthday candles that I got for his birthday cake, that I had to put away in a drawer because it hurt to see them.

So, I guess I will see the boys on Wednesday. I'll give Alex his card.. I says "Son, On your birthday and all the year through, wherever you go, whatever you do, Love will always be there with you. Have a wonderful Day!"

I am fooling myself, being the tough guy.. it's not me.

Last week, Andy had a tantrum and he started yelling at me. He told me that he hated me, he told me that when he turns 12 he is going to tell the judge that he never wants to see me again. Sure, it was because I wouldn't buy him a toy. That doesn't matter, there is real anger there and I wonder if they really miss me when they are not with me.. do they look forward to their time with me.

It was a windy day on Saturday, Dad's were in the park flying kites with their children.

Alex and Andy, I love you... and miss you.

I don't want to work today... it seems so trivial.. so routine, so insignificant. I feel lost today.

I should be happy.. I'll show happiness later.. I'll push these feelings inside. I'll cover them up, so I don't burden others. No, I don't want to talk about it Dad, NO, I don't want to answer those questions... "why doesn't she just let you see them? doesn't she know that you were going to celebrate his birthday? doesn't she care about the boys? doesn't she care that they have a father?" Sorry Mom, I don't want to answer your questions... "why don't you get a DNA test, they don't even look like you Chris?, why don't you just let them go? Let her take care of them"

My fiancee, wants to get back at her.. she is upset too.. she knows what is going on inside of me.. no matter how hard I try to mask it.

When I was a little boy... about 7 years old, I was innocent and didn't know much about the world. I guess I had a thing for Science because I was chosen to meet some astronauts. They came to our elementary school. They showed me liquid nitrogen and froze a flower and then smashed it like glass on the sidewalk. They talked about the future of space flight. They showed me a thing called the space shuttle. This was before we landed on the moon. I remembered that day and the funny models they showed us of triangle shaped planes with rounded bottoms. They told us that we could be astronauts. I was sad to see the shuttle explode on Saturday. I remembered how it felt 17 years ago when Challenger exploded. How it stopped all of us at work, how the world mourned.

The world is not as innocent anymore.. my boys know much more than I did when I was 8 or 10 years old. I know that they are confused. I need to fight for them... I apologize for sounding defeated at times.. but I feel defeated. I had dreams of what I would like to do for my boys.. how to make them enjoy their life as much as I can. How I could teach them not to hate, how to think about putting themesleves in the shoes of others and to have empathy. Instead, there are times when I see that they have learned much more from my ex wife.. how they saw some terrible things about people, how they laugh at others and how they can be mean at times. I want to teach my boys, but this weekend... I closed the door to their bedroom and picked up their toys.. I put the birthday presents in the closet, I realized that even if I picked them up on Friday, I would have only 4 days with them this month. It's February... Now, I will see them on the 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th for dinner only and then the weekend of 15th and 16th, they will stay at my house. This month.. they will use the beds at my house for 2 nights only. 2 nights....

You can count the amount of time that I have the boys in hours.. not days.. the amount of time they have with their father. Does that really make me a father?