When the darkness comes, it is total.

For most of my life, I’ve battled anxiety and depression. This battle has worn me out. There are days when I dread opening my eyes. There are difficult days.

The fact that I have a young son helps. I cannot be depressed around him, and he keeps me buoyant in an otherwise sinking world. But due to the fact that I only have my son half of the time (a scorched-earth custody battle is in the rearview mirror) the other half of my time on earth is tenuously dreadful. I can’t seem to break the cycle.

Therapy helps. But I cannot find all the answers in therapy. I try to be kind to myself. I try. But trying is for suckers. Doing is what we all want, what I want.

So this is an attempt to be open and honest about who I am and what I’ve gone through. Please don’t mistake this for a call for help or anything of the sort. I’m merely journaling. I’m merely trying to understand and make active progress toward a day when the darkness is safely on the horizon line where it belongs.

And I realize many more have suffered much more than I. This isn’t “My pain is bigger than your pain” academic mumbo-jumbo. Many of us have survived truama, and it affects us all differently. Some traumas, we can easily survive. Others, for some reason, take a greater toll. I’m sure there are people who have had a similar experience to mine, and were able to power through. They had the tools and resources to remain intact and unharmed. I had no such tools. I wasn’t prepared for this. Death? Sure. Pandemics and job insecurity and burning cities and lockdowns? No problem.

That’s why I’ve decided to share the line–we all have a line or many lines. Before the line was your old self. But the line (an event or occurrence) is a demarcation between the old you and a new you. The old you is gone, and the world has forever been changed. My goal is to survive this and remain optimistic, positive and good. But sometimes it’s damn hard to not hate the whole world (except my son). Including myself. The line is sharp, and forever marks where my old life ended and this new one began.

The Custody Battle:

Nothing prepared me for the trauma of April 2018. When my partner, who has three children from a previous marriage, moved out with our three-month-old son one day when I went to work, the wheels fell off of my life.

Certainly, I was stressed by the pressures of moving from a single, introverted writer and college instructor, to a “family man” with multiple step children and an infant. My partner became increasingly hostile throughout and after the pregnancy, which increased the pressures. Nightly, she would berate and spew hatred after all the kids were fed (by me) and asleep. Each night, the same spiral of her voice. I am nothing. I am false. I am not a good man (or smart, or kind, or etc.). Her voice was the voice of my lifelong depression, a demon speaking in my ear. Since everything she said basically confirmed my own insecurities (maybe I’m not good or kind or smart) they began to win out. I dreaded coming home, but my baby boy was there. He was the only aspect of my life that mattered, that I cared about.

And yes, my partner said I wasn’t a good father too. But I know I am. I also know that I’m a good person, a kind man, and a talented thinker. I can weld, write and woo.

But after she moved out one day, my mind came unglued. My only confidant at work hugged me and told me that my partner’s actions weren’t normal, and weren’t how healthy people operate. No, my partner never spoke to me about moving out. I just went to work one day and returned, ready for my next moments with my son, and everything was gone.

When I could finally get a hold of my partner, I asked why. Why did she leave? She would only answer “you know why.” But I never found out. As of now, it no longer matters. She said she was worried for the health and safety of our son, and her other children. But why? What did a fairly boring guy do or say to make her feel this way? Again, I don’t know and it no longer matters. I suppose her nightly monologues on all my shortcomings became real to her. She believed her own words. I rarely defended myself. Sometimes she would shove me so far down that I could only explosively defend myself, which would come off as hostile and in-line with her damning accusations.

My father paid to have the movers come while I was at work, to remove all of my life from our home. My mother believed that I was a danger to my son. Why else would my partner move away? What she said to my parents and others had to be true for her to make such a dramatic move. I was not a good man. I was an alcoholic. I was a danger to my baby boy.

What?

Most of the aftermath of that day in April 2018 was a swirl of confusion. Coworkers stopped me in the hall and asked about my son, my happiness. I had to pretend all was well. If I opened my mouth and spoke the truth… well, falling apart in public just wasn’t an option.

Nightly, I found myself wallowing on the floor, crying. I know that’s about as pathetic a picture one can paint, but that’s how I coped. Since I wasn’t good, since I was a danger to my son, I fell into the deepest, darkest pit of depression I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been pretty low. How I managed to get up and teach classes is a mystery to me. I was held together by rotted tape and knotted strings. Sometimes I couldn’t hold it together. I broke down in my office a few times. I screamed into my pillow at night until my voice was nothing but a rasp, and slept less than a few hours per night. I couldn’t speak to anyone… my own mother and father believed I was some monster. I had nobody to talk to, nobody to confide in, nobody to help.

I managed to see my son as much as I was allowed by my partner, but I never got to do many of the things that fatherhood promised. I missed his first word. I missed many firsts. After making it through the summer break, which was mostly spent on the floor of my livingroom, writhing in a blackness that made me want to claw my own eyes out, to tear off my skin, my voice hoarse and ruined from uncontrollable tears—a kind of crying I’ve never known—I made one attempt after another to salvage my life. My son! I waited my entire life for my son to show up, and then he was taken away. I drank if I remembered to, but I didn’t need alcohol to feel any worse than I already did. Nothing numbed the pain. I lost days and days to sitting in my livingroom, staring at the television—which was off most of the time. The dark, empty screen stared back at me with unflinching hatred, kindness, confusion. I very nearly lost my mind.

Son gone. Partner gone. Parents gone. Joshua gone.

Five months after the day she left, I mustered up the courage to mention mediation so I could have partial custody and time with my son, my former partner erupted in rage. While holding our son, who was crying, she screamed at me in her loudest voice. She would move, leave the state. I would never find her. I would never see my son again. I was a pussy. I should just shut up and crawl into a bottle and die.

And that’s when I realized something. That was her plan. My partner knew more about me than any human on earth. With her, I believed in the power of truth and trust. I thought I found my soulmate. For years, I held nothing back. It was refreshing to find someone so understanding, who listened. And everything she knew about me—my tendency toward depression, my self-doubt and low self-esteem—was used against me. She actually wanted me dead. She wanted me to do the dirty work. She purposefully shoved me so far into the earth that I couldn’t find a way up on my own. My mother and father. My son.

When I left after her latest rage attack, I remembered some aspects about myself. I got a lawyer. Leading up to the trial, I didn’t see my son for three months of his first year of life. After two trial dates, the judge granted me observed custody for three hours, three days a week. My lawyer said this was expected, and a step-by-step process. My mother had to be present during my custody time–the same woman who believed I was a danger to my son, the woman who raised me to be a kind man, the woman who has known me my entire life but believed my partner, known for about three years.

But I got to see my son!

Yes, it took three months and two trials to be granted observed visitations, but I didn’t care. I love fatherhood. I love my son so much it hurts my chest when I think of him and all I wanted to spare him—a broken home, poverty, growing up without a father—everything I had suffered as a child.

You see, at the first trial, I was blindsided by my partner’s response to my petition for partial custody. She wrote sworn statements that purported I physically abused my son, physically abused her, was a drug addict and an alcoholic. None of this was true, but I had to defend myself against every allegation. When you have a crying mother on the stand, and a man accused of vile things, you can imagine how the trial went.

And I know… everyone I ever mentioned this to would roll their eyes. One colleagues said, “Oh, you goddamned men,” when I told her of my situation. There is a correct tendency to assume a mother is inherently better at parenting than a father. This is usually true. But there are plenty of terrible mothers who psychologically and physically abuse or even kill their children. So there.

We spent the first two trial dates on the allegations of me physically abusing my son, which of course turned out to be nothing. I would never harm a child. I abhor violence of any kind and rarely raise my voice. I have never touched a woman on this earth in any threatening or aggressive manner. It’s hard to be an alcoholic, drug addict while working fifty hours per week in academia. I agreed to alcohol monitoring and drug tests. I defended myself. My partner looked crazier and crazier to the court, to my family. My mother and father came around, never apologizing, but finding out that my former partner was batshit crazy.

My parenting time increased. I eventually got unsupervised visits. The first time I was alone with my only son occurred when he was nearly a year old. I still had limited time, but I was a father, and my son was finally with me. Yes, if you haven’t already known, I cried. I’ve always enjoyed a good cry. Any man who says that isn’t manly is probably a misogynist or trapped by societal expectations. But I can cry at a good commercial. Happy tears are my favorite of course, and I get many of those now with my son.

The custody battle continued. My partner sought therapy for our son because she felt he was traumatized by being with me. Since her original accusations didn’t work, she accused me of being mentally unstable and incapable of being a father due to depression and suicidal thoughts. All notes from two therapists I’d seen (one for chronic back pain years ago, the other for the loss of my son) were brought into court. The fact that I had been sexually abused was brought up, along with my lifelong battle with anxiety and depression. Not only was this information disseminated, but it was aired to the world. When that didn’t prove to be damning to her cause, my partner went to the next level.

To keep her hands clean, she mentioned concerns of sexual abuse to my son’s therapist. The therapist, due to mandatory reporting laws, was required to report me to the state. So after being accused of domestic violence, child abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental instability, I awoke one morning to two investigators for Child Protective Services interviewing me about “rectal tearing” mentioned by my ex. I nearly vomited right there in my own kitchen, in front of these two women staring at me like I was the most vile thing scraped off their shoe.

My only response: “If I ever noticed any such thing regarding my son, the first thing I would do is call the police. Did she ever call the police? That’s what a responsible parent would do.”

So that ended that. To spare reliving the vast majority of a time that was so incredibly bittersweet—I was spending time with my son, but battling this ridiculous custody dispute that shook the foundations of all I knew about the world and myself—I will cut to the chase. Yes, I followed my ex to find out where she was taking my son when I discovered she didn’t return home after picking him up at exchange. I was going insane. She was found to have moved back in with her previous husband—the man who actually beat her and raped her and threatened to kill her repeatedly and in full view of her children. She lied to the court about her address and the fact that she was co-habitating with this man (who had threatened my life as well). My son wasn’t safe.

She signed off on my custody request the night before the next trial date, which would have exposed her lies and falsity in an entirely new light. I got 50/50 custody of my son. My lawyer called to give me the news. I was in a training session and had to go into a bathroom stall where I allowed hot tears to flow. Yes, I was out fifty thousand dollars—my son’s college fund. A lifetime of vacations. Whatever. I had my son. I could be a father. Finally.

But that didn’t stop the crazytrain from moving full steam ahead. My former partner suffers greatly from some serious disorders. She had my son seen by specialist after specialist. There was always something wrong. Then she got him diagnosed as autistic before the age of two. More therapists and specialists. But my ex feels important, needed. She has never had a career or a job to note, and she has nothing to do but manufacture disharmony and strife. When one comes from an abusive background, often one learns to almost crave tension. Tension is normal. If there is no tension present, it will be manufactured. So my son has become her tension, used to satisfy her need to be listened to, valued, believed.

For her, my son is not normal. He isn’t developing correctly. He’s damaged goods.

But she cannot make it true alone. She needs others to support her theories and thoughts. She wants him to always need her. She wants strife and tension because that’s what normal life feels lik.

Time with my son is all I have now. Yes, it has been one year since the trial ended, but that year has been swallowed up by darkness and light. The light is my son, my every second with him. The darkness is everything else.

I have lost everything… trust in my family, a life with my son and a loving partner, and many friends who stopped hearing from me for the years spent crying on the floor of my livingroom. I now have nobody but my two and a half year old son. The pandemic has removed me from my work as an instructor. I have zero social contacts. No sign of romance or love on the horizon, and honestly, the thought of such makes my heart pound in anxiety. Who is to say my next love won’t do the same? In short, I worry for myself, for my son. I want to be here for him, and want to be the man I was before falling so deep into the well of despair that I still, I STILL cannot get out.

I am in therapy. I try to find ways to smile. I will continue to march onward, two steps forward for each backward.

Between time with my son, I know I shouldn’t sit and stare at the dead television screen. I know what I should do. My therapist is frustrated with my lack of progress, and so am I. When I find myself lying rigid in my bed at 3am, every muscle tensed and arrested, heart pounding, I hear my therapist’s words: You are experiencing PTSD. Allow it to pass through you. It will go away, slowly, if you make peace with who you are and what you have accomplished.

But when you’re coming out of such a deep hole, it can take years. I’m hopeful. The days ahead will be difficult, but rewarding. My son is sensitive, brilliant, amazing and a force of light. He is a good person. A little like his dad, in those respects.

If only I could remember who I am all the time, I’d be that much further toward the end of this horrible period of my life.

My ex is still a terrible person. Many have said, “It will get better once she sees what a great dad you are, once the passion of her lunacy has ebbed. I don’t think it ever will. I have to suffer through every exchange, every mean-spirited email or accusation or snide remark. But I am not a terrible human person. At exchange, I smile for my son’s sake. I keep it light and positive and am not baited into my ex partner’s drama show. But it still hurts both me and my son.

I am crawling out of the hole, and nothing will keep me from being a positive, kind, thoughtful and loving man. Though the journey thus far has been long and lonely, I will persevere. I must.

And with that, I carry on…

If you’ve had a traumatic experience you are struggling to make sense of and recover from, please feel free to post on contact me directly if you’d like to stay out of the public eye. Just speak. Write. Even though writing this was painful, I feel a little better now. A little.

And I pick up my son in a couple of hours for the weekend. It will be a great weekend. Once it’s over, I need to be a few more inches toward the top of the hole. I’m digging upward, but it’s slow going.