My heart was heavy on Father’s Day.

One might expect a single mom to be a little down each Father’s Day but this wasn’t about me. My sadness didn’t spring from self pity, or frustration or even disappointment for my kid. I honestly kept thinking how much it must suck for my son’s dad. It kept me in a state of mild melancholy all day.

I still love the man. When I first realized it I couldn’t accept it. After the things he’s put our family through with his meth addiction I felt ashamed. How can I still love him?

How can’t I? He’s the father of my only child. I wanted to have his baby. It was intentional. He loved me so well…, until he didn’t. I miss that guy. He has been gone for a long while, consumed by meth, transformed, maligned, twisted, destroyed. It breaks my fucking heart.

I’m still going to court in 2 days to ask the judge to grant me a 5 year protection order. Loving a ghost doesn’t change the reality. He’s a danger to himself, our son and me. He’s this malicious child that can’t be trusted. I read his text message threats and I don’t feel anger, I feel pity and disappointment mingled with fear.

On Father’s Day I just felt sad. He’s so lost. He’s so fucking nuts. His is a life of misery and I just can’t help him. He takes too much of me when I need to be focusing on our boy. It sounds selfish. It’s fucked, I admit. But I waited, and I prayed, and I pushed and I sobbed. I endured fight and bite and threat and insult. I wanted to believe it would get better, but eventually I just had to wake the fuck up.

It wasn’t going to happen because he didn’t really want to quit using. What he wanted was for me to start using again with him, and that was never an option. The day I saw the pink plus sign that life ended. That girl who liked to fuck and do lines and be high got uprooted and replaced by me, a fiercely driven mother.

I will succeed where my parents failed. I have to. It’s not optional. My kid will be better off with no father than to grow up with a crazy tweaker as a role model.

Yet still I feel sad. And that’s OK. I’m letting myself feel sad. It’s a new thing I’m trying out. Rather than shame myself and bury and bottle I’m just letting it resonate. It feels like the right way. The middling path.

So yes. I do love that guy. It hurts me to do the things I must. It pains me to consider how this is affecting him. I feel a little guilty but I’m resolute. This is really happening. In two days I’m going to bawl my eyes out in front of a judge because I’m going to feel the pain of all this and that’s fine.

It is what it is.