For the first time in my life, I was living alone.
Not counting Christian.
When he was with me, the little house felt alive. Toys scattered across the floor. Cartoons playing too loud in the background. Tiny shoes sitting near the door.
But when he left, silence moved in quickly.
I shared custody now, which meant there were stretches of time where I suddenly didn’t know what to do with myself.
I was still living out in the sticks then, somewhere between surviving and rebuilding. I worked, paid bills when I could, and tried convincing myself life was stabilizing.
My friends wanted me to go out and have fun.
One night they introduced me to a woman they thought was only supposed to be a one night stand.
But I never worked that way.
I always fell in love.
She had two daughters and a complicated life. Her oldest daughter lived with her father and his parents only a few houses away from where she stayed. Her younger daughter was mostly being raised elsewhere by family.
Looking back now, I think something inside me immediately wanted to save everyone involved.
I wanted to save her.
I wanted to save the kids.
I wanted to build a family again.
I had always seen love as an absolute.
Not casual.
Not temporary.
Not something you sampled for a night and walked away from the next morning.
To me, love was total.
Maybe that was romantic.
Maybe it was foolish.
Probably both.
I remember one night riding my motorcycle around her neighborhood over and over while Christian sat behind me.
Her car was parked down the street near her ex’s house while she attended her daughter’s birthday party.
I could see the house from outside.
I could see the car.
I remember circling slowly through the neighborhood while talking to her on the phone, trying to convince myself everything was fine.
Even then, I think I already knew I was emotionally too deep into something that was supposed to mean nothing.
But when she left the party later that night, she called me again.
And the relationship continued.
I slowly became part of their lives.
Eventually both girls came into our home.
I truly loved being a father. Not just to Christian, but to them too. I wanted stability. I wanted family dinners, birthday parties, school events, normal life. I wanted the kind of family I had spent most of my life imagining.
My mother-in-law loved me almost immediately. She was genuinely kind to me from the beginning, and for a while I think she saw me as someone trying to hold everything together.
Life wasn’t perfect, but for a time it felt hopeful.
I was still working at the print shop then. Over the years I had been promoted several times until I eventually ran large printing presses by myself.
I was excellent at setup.
Excellent at solving problems.
But terrible at quietly watching machines run for hours.
I would miss small details.
Ink levels.
Pagination mistakes.
Paper alignment.
Sometimes thousands of sheets would already be ruined before I caught the problem.
I still have nightmares about it now.
Dreams where presses keep running while mistakes pile up faster than I can stop them.
At the time, I thought I was simply failing.
Looking back now, I think I was drowning in anxiety, depression, and boredom all at once.
Sitting beside a machine for hours waiting for something to go wrong was torture for my brain.
Eventually management noticed the waste.
And eventually, I was fired.
At the time it felt devastating.
Looking back now, it was probably the beginning of my real life.