Presence is the Pattern

They don’t tell you what happens after the story changes. Not in the parenting books. Not in the movies. Not in therapy. Not in the comments from people who’ve never had to schedule their child’s bedtime around a custody calendar. Divorce is not a crisis. It’s the clearest sentence you’ll ever say after years of rewriting yourself in someone else’s voice. It’s what happens when you finally admit: I can’t stay in something that erases me.

Because it wasn’t just the end of a marriage. It was the end of being treated like a character in someone else’s drama. The long, slow exhaustion of having your way of thinking and being told it was fundamentally wrong in a tone that made you doubt your own reflection. And you can’t live like that. You shouldn’t live like that. Especially not when there’s a the smartest toddler on the planet watching.

And I have him. A walking encyclopedia of trucks, bins, dinosaurs, and sewer systems. When we’re together, it’s not just fathering, it’s a celebration. It’s a rhythm. I get to be the man who breaks up toddler bitch fights on the playground with a smile. The man who stands next to him for an hour while he hyperfixates on a piece of pretend play so repetitive it could be classified as experimental theatre. The man who cooks a variety of meals shaped like spheres. Because round food is apparently elite cuisine to some. I’m the man to build time machines with at 2AM because sleep is not yet here. This is the good stuff. The real work. The work I want to do.

And yeah, we don’t live together all the time. That’s the reality. But I’m there when it counts. I show up. Fully. And presence is the pattern I’ve chosen. Not control. Not whatever old version of “dad” I thought I should to be. I don’t need to overcompensate. I just need to be there. Real, kind, consistent.

I didn’t get this script from my parents. I didn’t inherit a model for how to co-parent with a person who still sends sideways messages with lots of unnecessary quotation marks. But I do know this: just because you’re taking responsibility, doesn’t mean you have to take on other people’s baggage. Those things look similar, but they’re not the same. One’s about care. The other’s about control. One builds something. The other just repeats the damage.

I can’t stand on a rooftop and yell out every hard truth about what happened. I can’t list the insults or post screenshots. Not because they wouldn’t be justified, but because I’ve got a front-row audience who matters more. And co-parenting is a lifelong group project where I don’t get to fire the other person. She’s around. Forever. Like an old ringtone you can’t delete.

Also there’s something I didn’t plan for. I found real love. Not dramatic, not chaotic, not exhausting. It didn’t fix me. It reminded me I didn’t need to be fixed. She just appeared with curly hair, and the eyes that make me feel known. With her, I’m calm. I laugh more. I feel like myself. Real. And when I see her with my son, something in me clicks. That’s happiness.

And so this is the wish. That this patchwork version of fatherhood I’m living becomes its own kind of pattern. That even with a fractured week, I can build consistency. That even in shared custody and offhanded insults and exhausted mornings, my son grows up knowing that love is safe. That boundaries are normal. That kindness can be firm. That he is allowed to be fully himself, because he saw his dad do the same. That he never has to dim his light to keep the peace.