The End

So the day has finally come that I gave up the ghost in the fight to see my daughter.

This case has cost me well over £10,000 which of course has left me in debt. To be represented by a barrister and have a solicitor working for me means each court attendance costs me around £750, I have simply ran out of money to fund this fruitless pursuit anymore.

Mentally it has changed me, I’m not the same man who I started this as. Twice during this case I have gone past breaking point and I will carry that mental damage with me forever. Every video call, good or bad, leaves me broken for days. Every card I send kills me inside. Every Christmas, birthday, halloween, easter, fireworks, school plays etc… I miss is time I’ll never get back, I am reminded that I should be with her. Shes my daughter and I should be seeing her experience those things and enjoy the magic they bring. Instead I’m left with a constant gap in my life, a part of me always missing, constantly without that extension of me that used to make me so happy. I have no shame to say its made me a deeply deeply depressed man, it’s not mental illness if it’s with reason that makes it natural human reaction. A natural reaction to loosing your daughter is to be destroyed and that is the pattern I have followed.

The courts and indeed her mother have made it clear to me there is never an end to the rainbow, always on the horizon but never any closer. There is no hope left inside the system, all because I am a father and not a mother. The family courts are applying the views of 1960’s Britain where woman have no right outside the home, and men have no place in it ether. That is despite on paper laws changing, in practise it has not.

More than all of this though, my daughter is being hurt by my endeavor for her. Calling two men ‘daddy’, having me call three times a week reminding her I’m still there while having her own family separate to that, hearing nothing but negative things about me while still having some kind of feeling for me. The poor girl must be so confused, so upset, such a crocked view of what a family looks like. I saw a picture of her looking at her new daddy recently, she looked at him with such love and admiration, it killed me seeing it but made me realise I’m making the right choice for her.

I love that girl more than words could ever say, and hopefully one day she will seek to find me herself when she’s older and understands more but until then I’ll watch from a distance, send cards at birthdays and christmas, continue paying child maintenance and think about how I could’ve been a father.