08/09/2025
“We were young when we had her. I was twenty-three, the mother was twenty; we weren’t planning to have kids yet. I don't want to say the relationship fell apart because of our daughter. It was mostly us. We were going through a stressful time: I’d just lost my mother, she’d just lost her grandmother. We were going through an eviction and had to move into a shelter. We just handled our stress in different ways. She dealt with it by wanting to be young and dumb and free. We were arguing about everything, and I’m not good at arguing. I don't like confrontation. I get agitated, antsy. Every time there was an argument, I’d get so angry that I’d have to leave the facility to get some air. I’ve been that way since childhood. My mom and my dad were heavy addicts; they lost custody of me when I was four. I grew up in programs. I didn't have nobody to show me affection. And it made me angry, I was an angry kid. I saw that other people had love, and understood it, and to be honest, I wasn't okay with it. There are times where I still feel like that, sometimes even now as a father. But every time I look at her it goes away. It went away the moment she was born. When you held your first kid, did you see a glow around them? Did you ever see a glow? Because I saw a glow. And I felt it. It was like, holy s**t. I wanted to cry the first time I felt it, because I wasn't sure what it was. I was confused. But as it gradually grew on me, I was like: OK, so this is what love is. And it felt beautiful. It made me want to be better. I don't want my daughter seeing the side of me from when I was young and didn't know how to cope with my anger. Right now I have her every day after school. There’s a counselor at her school: Mr. Gonzalez. I go to see him once, sometimes twice a week. He’s been very helpful. He’s teaching me how to cope with life, how to handle arguments with my baby’s mother. Now if she texts me twenty paragraphs about things that happened six years ago, I don’t fight back. I just don't respond, until it’s time to get the baby.”
