Moving to a 50/50 custody arrangement

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I last posted on the blog.  It seems time has a way of slipping through your fingers when you’re a single parent.  My son’s mother and I went back to court this past 2 weeks and the custody arrangement was changed to a 50/50 “one week on/one week off” agreement.   The reason for the change was a combination of her improvement, my sincere desire for her to be more involved in our son’s life, and my lack of finances for another protracted legal battle.  I think, and have to believe, that it will be good for my son in the long run.

It’s been almost exactly 3 years since I fled the house with my son.  Without getting into the details of why I had to do what I did, I left with no shoes on my feet and just the clothes on our backs.  Since that time, I’ve had my son 80% of the time.  Initially, my son’s mother had supervised visitations which eventually moved to unsupervised.  I couldn’t have imagined on the day I left with our son that what I had thought would be just a few days to give her time to cool down would turn into 3 years.  Life sometimes has a way of shattering all your hopes and expectations I suppose.

So this past week was the first week of the 50/50 custody arrangement and the first time that my son has been away from me for more than a couple of days.  Feeling sad and missing him dearly, the only thing I could think of was my hope that he was having fun and not missing me as much as I missed him.  Over the last 3 years, my whole life has been about being a full time dad to my son.  There hasn’t been a single moment that I wasn’t with him when he was not in school or with his mother.  Whether it was taking him to events, playdates, or anything else, I have made sure I was there with him.  I’ve rearranged my work schedule and put my social and career life on the back burner so that I would be there for him.

And while divorce is never easy on a child, I felt we were fortunate in that we had separated when he was too young to really understand what was happening.  He was 2 1/2 years old and though I’m sure he knew something had changed, I did my best to be there for him “double time” to give him the attention and love that a child needs at such an age.  When we agreed to go to a 50/50 custody, the thing that broke my heart most was that he would be put through another major change in his life at an age when he becoming cognizant of such things…I felt like he would be going through another divorce.

I pray that I’ve made the right decision in agreeing to the change in custody.  And I hope he knows that I did it because I felt having his mother be more involved in his life is a good thing for a child.  That I love him and miss him so much my heart aches.

…and though I don’t want him to be sad, there is a part of me that wishes he misses me as much as I miss him….