It's been a while

 It's been a while since I've sat down to write anything.

 Hell, it's been a while since I've even thought about sitting down to write anything.

 So here I am tonight.

 I've been busy with the house, busy with wrangling all my children. I'm finding it far harder to unpack a house while simultaneously trying to keep up with the chaos that three children cause in day to day life.

 That, and the rainforest i'm trying to tame in the back yard. I knew I should have gotten it in writing when they said they were bringing in a landscaper.

 All in all, though, it's going well. The house feels more like a home every day. The kids each have their own spots, and they are loving it. They are super excited about Tina and her kids moving out too. Logan is so excited about the thought of having a brother. He decided that Michael could be his real brother. He didn't have to just be a step brother.

 I didn't feel that I needed to explain it to him.

 That brings me back to the blessing I never expected after everything that happened in my life.

 After everything that happened with Robin, I figured I just simply did not have it in me to love again. Once you love fiercely and passionately, and lose that love, you find yourself afraid. Unsure. Unwilling.

 I expected that I would be broken forever.

 God knows when we are at the spot when we are most ready for things to move forward. He knows when we need a little nudge sometimes. He puts people in our path and lets us go to see what we will do with it.

 Like so many things, it's up to us what we chose to do. I had this nagging feeling that if I ran, I'd regret it forever. As I often do, I was worried what people would think. I was worried that people would judge me for moving on. I was worried that there would be murmurs of it being to soon.

 In my paranoid way, I was worried there would be questions about how much I loved Robin, if I could move on.

 I also learned that grieving never really stops. You carry it with you every day, even after you move on. I hope that's a lesson no one else needs to learn.

 But here I am. I'm learning, every day that it's ok to be happy again. I learn anew every day that my heart is far more capable than I thought it was. I learned that with three kids of my own, there is still room to love more.

 I learned that some people get to have more than one soulmate. That took a while to process.

 But here I am, more in love than I thought I was able to be. The kids are excited, her kids are excited. Life happens while we all sit by and make plans.

 I never expected any of this.

 I'm glad I'm not the one writing my story. I'm not nearly creative enough.

New Chapters

  So I know it's been a while since I've written anything, and I apologize for that. I hope to rectify that soon. I've been pretty busy lately.

  As it stands, on Friday, I close on my house. The kids and I will be starting to move all of our stuff for a week, then going to Idaho to see Tina and her kids for a week, and then coming back to finish the move before school starts. Busy busy.

  In a way, this is finishing the last page to the last chapter in my life, and really, starting the next one. This one is open ended so far. I don't have much of a framework to go off of. The plotline has all changed, and characters have been re-introduced. There are new goals, new plans, new destinations.

  In the past few months, I've had to accept that all my old dreams with Robin are truly gone. I think we all hold onto things like that after loss, at least for a while. Eventually, though, we need to let go and realign. Letting go is never an easy thing to do, but it's part of the healing process too.

  So here I am, starting a new chapter in my life. Moving into a new house, the kids and I finding our new spot.

  I'm deeply in love again, which I never ever expected to have happen. After Robin, I had really written off that part of my life, and was just waiting to head down a darker road than I wanted to be on. Having my kids, and getting in contact with Tina again was the only thing that kept me from that.

  The house is more than I expected to find, we just had to let go of the old dream of staying in the Central District, and accept our new spot in the world.

  The pages ahead are unwritten. I don't know where these roads will lead me. My hands are empty, to better discover what is ahead of me. I'm letting go of the old things I was holding onto and really embracing this new beginning that I have.

   I think it will always be bittersweet, but at this point, it is exciting. And frightening. I feel alive again for the first time in a long time.

   So this week finds me standing at the beginning of a new road, my kids by my side, and the best friend, love and companion I never expected to find, and her amazing and beautiful children too. (Think the Brady Bunch)

  My story has come full circle now, it was pain, but now there is hope. I'm wiser, stronger and I feel a far better person than I used to be. I am embracing this road that I am now on, and walking it in earnest.

Moving Ahead

 It seems like it would go without saying, but my life has turned out in ways I never expected.

 The set of plans and goals I once lived by is gone. Replaced by something more organic and flowing. Adapting to life around me as it happens. Not holding on to a set of dreams, defining myself by where I want to see myself in a few years.

 Not waiting for things. Trying not to be afraid.

 I learned the hard lesson that we can't wait until something is perfect and all our doubts are gone to act on it. If you do that, sometimes you find yourself waiting, and when you are finally, life has already intervened, and the chance has passed, never to be reclaimed.

 That happened a lot with Robin and I. We put things off at the advice of others, waiting until it was more financially viable, waiting until we found the perfect house/car/etc. Waiting till we had a chance to have our honeymoon.

 We waited to long. The chance was taken from us.

 When I spent those nights trying to figure my life out again, trying to figure out who I was, and trying to figure out my future again, I decided to make a real effort to act more.

 You can think about doing something forever. I can think about running, but it won't make me stronger. I can think about eating, but it won't help my hunger. I can think about living, but as the years grind on, will I look back satisfied at only thinking, waiting until things are perfect?

 That's why I was so confused when the woman who is my list re-entered my life. We'd been friends for years, but had never known. I thought everything was perfect but the timing. It turns out the timing was perfect too, as I was headed to a very dark place. She found me.

 I spent a while thinking about that before we made any choices. Makes you wonder what would occour if we'd just kept waiting, and not acting.

 I've been thinking a lot, since I'm on the verge of buying a house now, moving the kids and I into the next step in our life. I never expected to have to make these choices on my own. But they have to be made.

 So I'm making those choices. Making those hard calls. The truth is, it scares me. I've always carried a lot of self doubt, and when my kids are involved, it makes it worse, as they aren't something I'm willing to risk.

 That's the thing about life, though, we have to go  live it.
                                                                                                                                     -A

Half a year

So it's now been half a year since Robin passed away.

A year since my life, the life of my kids, the life of so many around us changed.

Time marches on though. It never stops, and you either quit, or keep going. I kept going, because it was my only choice. I have the kids to look out for now, and I was pleasantly surprised by falling in love with an old friend.

 In our darkest times, sometimes everything comes out and surprises us. Which we'd never see if we quit.

 Which really makes me thing about the Tough Mudder I did yesterday. Some of the guys from work wanted to do it, so I tossed my hat in the ring. Not enough time to really prepare for it, no real idea what lay in store, and I'm so glad I did it.

 After Robin passed, I decided to stop putting off doing things that I wanted to do. So when the Mudder came up, I signed up. It was one of the best thing's I've ever done.

 Make no mistake, I hurt quite a bit. I am sore, I have road rash and that lingering feeling that I pushed myself past my limit because I couldn't quit.

 Like all the signs say, "There's no quit in here."

 Like the rest of life.

 So now I see where it goes from here. Lots of new things happening now. A new relationship when I gave up on ever finding love again. Looking for a new house for the kids and I. Learning how to be the parent, on my own.

 So there we go. All you can do is keep going. "There's no quit in here."

Getting Back to it

 Getting back to it. That seemed like a good title for this when I sat down to write today.

 All in all, that's what I've been doing across the board lately. Getting back to running, getting back to things I liked to do in the past. Getting back to living. Now I'm getting back to writing.

 For a while, every time I sat down to write, I ended up reading through old stuff and remembering. It was good for growing, and moving through things, though bad for productivity. Now I'm at the point where I am really embracing moving forward.

 It had been six months now since Robin passed away. There are still a lot of emotions, and they mostly hit me out of the blue lately. My greatest progress here has been embracing the emotions, embracing the memories, but still looking forward at this point.

 The turning point here was accepting my lot in life. I was a single dad now. I'm in my thirties and I have a lot on my plate. I decided that at some time in the future, I'd have to think about getting out and doing things, seeing people. Dating.

 I decided I really wasn't into that scene. I decided that the fairly dark road I was beginning to head down did not interest me that much. I had really decided to give up on love, since I never expected to find it.

 In a fairly uncharacteristic way, I sat down and made a list. Now, I don't usually make lists, I should, but it doesn't really work with the organized chaos that is usually the way I do things. I rarely remember to make a grocery list. I should work on that.

 But I did. I sat down and listed the exact things I want in another person. Personality traits, hobbies, style, looks, family life, other stuff I'm not going to mention. It was pretty detailed, and I had in my mind what I was looking for. At the forefront of it was someone that had do understand the place I was at in my life. Someone who could understand that my kids are the most important thing to me, and that they take precedence.

 Someone who would love my kids. They have been through so much, and I wasn't going to parade girlfriends past them as I made my way through life. I wasn't going to let someone who did not deserve them even meet them.

 So I basically decided that I would never find someone like that. I figured I had my soulmate, and God took her from me, and that was that. All I had left to do was get the kids off to college, live alone in my house for a while, and then, at some point, I'd check out.

 That's what I was going with.

 But life tends to happen while we are making all of our plans. I'd gotten the kids to bed, and was getting ready to play video games when I noticed a friend of mine, someone I'd only talked to briefly in passing since we were stationed in California was on Facebook chat.

 I'm surprised I'd even stopped to look, actually, as orcs weren't going to bring the Emperors Wrath on themselves. But I did. And I wondered what she was up to. So I asked.

 I believe my exact words were, "What's up girl?"

And with that, it started. When I had just decided not to look, I started talking with her, and like it always is with people who served together in the military, you pick up where you left off. Where we left off was as close friends who had both recently gotten married. We had always had a lot in common, and had flirted with one another, but nothing had ever come of it. We remained good friends, and with everything we had both been through in the years between, we actually had more in common now.

 The first night we talked, that phone call lasted about three hours. Twelve years of life and pain is a lot to condense. At the end of that phone call, I knew there were feelings, though the timing was unfortunate. There are always people that will say something about the timing when you start moving on. The truth of it, though, is that grief and living afterwards is an open ended thing.

 It doesn't ever go away, you just learn to live with it. So we talked. We talked about our children. We talked about the pain in our lives. We talked about healing, and how we both need it.

 So in the end, after a lot of overthinking, and wondering, and talking with my oldest about how she even felt about her Daddy dating, we decided to move ahead and become official. The only other choice was to run from how I felt, and hope it was still there when a "better time" came around. I learned, though, that there rarely is a "better time" for anything. If we wait too long, we miss things. I didn't want to miss this.

 I am happier than I have been in a long time. And, I guess, at the end of the day, that's what I want most out of life. I want my kids and I, and those that I love to be happy.

 So now, I am really getting back to it. Back to living. The next step in my life now if finding a house. I'm talking to a realtor now, and have everything started for my home loan, so I am bravely venturing into this new life of mine.

Bleeding some.

 Tattoos.

 I have the tattoo in Robin's memory set to be started on Wednesday, the 28th. I've put a lot more thought into this one, and fretted over it more than any of my others. It's also the first one I haven't drawn any part of myself. I didn't trust my abilities enough to render what I wanted. So I thank my friend Jon for the beautiful piece of work he did. I will proudly wear it.

 This piece means a lot to me. I always make it a point to get nothing on myself that represented a person, other than my children, as they can never leave me. Robin was taken, and she will always be a part of our lives, and this is how I chose to memorialize her. All my tattoos have a story, a meaning.

 This one will hurt the most though.

 It will also be a memorial service, of sorts, for me. It's no lie that my faith has been shaken in all of this. It is still there in some form, but this is how I chose to do her memorial, my personal one. In my own melodramatic way, it makes the most sense.

 It will always be a reminder to me of everything. What we had together. The fact that she's still watching us. All the growing we did together. The mistakes we made. The fact that I'm the man I am today because of her.

 The tremendous injustice in the world. I am who I am because of her. Because of my mistakes. Because of the way we grew. The pain, the love. The agony of the end.

 It will also be a constant reminder of who I am now. Of why I do things the way I do now. Of why I'll never repeat the mistakes of my past. This will be a constant reminder in this next chapter in my life, of things that I will follow through on; of things that I will make damn sure never go unsaid. Of my desire to never get comfortable or complacent with where I am, or who I'm with.

 It will be a permanent reminder to live, even if I don't want to. It will be a reminder of strength and grace.

 So this one will hurt the most. The physical pain is not an issue. The blood dries, and the healing begins, like in everything else. The pain fades over time. Some scars are just far prettier than others.

Putting Pen to Paper and Starting New Chapters

 So it's been a while since I've written anything. I took a little hiatus, or burned out for a bit, whatever you want to call it. The turning of the year was rougher on me than I expected, and it took a little while to sort a lot of things. Moving past her birthday was a big one. Now it is mid-way through March, and I've been feeling a lot better.

 I recently decided to get back to living, since I realized that I was either going to do that, or grief would destroy me. So I started looking at the future. Planning things again, doing my taxes, thinking about a house, thinking about life.

 In my experience in this, letting go of certain dreams has been a struggle. It isn't fair in any way when people see their dreams shattered, whatever they may be. After a while I noticed I'd been clutching to the tattered remains of them, not sure why; maybe for security, maybe for no reason at all.

 I've seen that anger is like that too. I thought I was doing better with it, but it comes and goes. I think it will take some time to move past it, but I'm working through that as well. Luckily, the kids keep me busy enough I don't get much of a chance to dwell on it.

 I guess the biggest thing I realized was I needed to start actually moving forward. I will never forget, but I need to let myself live.

 So the first thing I decided, was that I'd make it a point to post mainly over here, since, like it or not, the story I can write now is of me and the kids. So, I'll make it the best I can.