The second anxiety is scarier. It’s an unknown anxiety that hits you in the middle of the day and makes your hands shake and you just don’t know why. The feeling that the air has been sucked out of your lungs regardless that you were sitting still, minding your own business.

I’ve been clutched by an unknown anxiety for the last few days. I tend to be a tad too introverted, a little high strung. So when I have an anxiety attack for which I can’t find a plausible reason, that only leads to more unease. I have been struggling to find a cause, identify the problem in my life so I can address it. Lord knows I have the right to be stressed, but none of it is new or peculiar to this time and place.

I’m planning a trip to London which I can only afford thanks to cashed stock options and the couch of a friend’s friend, all the while trying to figure how I will afford being in Ohio for my daughter’s birthday, much less christmas. But I’m always dealing with financial issues, have since I was 18. Why is this different? I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that my daughter’s mother is in love with someone else. I was working on being comfortable with the idea of her as nothing more than my best friend, and now I’m plagued by insecurities over my very place in both hers and my dauther’s lives. Yet again, I’ve been trying to cope with this for months, if not years. Why should it burn so brightly now? I’m terribly lonely lately, with a handful of regular friends that I rarely talk to. Plenty of acquaintances if I want to go to the bars, but I don’t anymore. But I’ve always been a loner, a modern day Steppenwolf, who am I to complain about loneliness? And I have to present the software package I’ve been laboring to develop for the last few months to half the managers in my department tomorrow. But so what? If they don’t like it, then I will get more time and resources to make it better.

The lump sum? Yeah, I’ve been stressed and frayed, but these are worries I expect myself to handle. And for the most part, I have handled for a long time now. And for each of these situations, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Bonuses and stock sells I know are coming. A trip to London, my daughter’s birthday, and a week with her over christmas. The knowledge that even if I’m lonely today, I don’t know who I’ll meet tomorrow. And the confidence that my software is already what I want it to be, even if I will have to tweak it to please others.

So why am I having anxiety attacks nearly every hour for the last five days? Why am I obsessively checking my bank account for some magical change and my email’s empty in-box for any sign of a human connection? Has it all just culminated to a break down? Am I finally showing signs of my mother’s bipolar temperment? Or is my body trying to tell me something? I believe our minds catch patterns and rhythms that we don’t consciously percieve. What is my subconcious detecting, recognizing and trying to prepare me for? I want to convince myself that there is some glorious prize just out of my physical sight, but even that seems thin - a vague hope to hold onto. I guess I will just have to take deep breaths and wait to find out.

So where am I in my goals you ask? Well,…

• I’m at the gym every other day, running, lifting, and swimming. This is the BIG accomplishment that keeps me going. And it’s the one I’m seeing the most appreciable differences. Not only can I actually SEE muscles again, they ain’t too shabby!
• My attempt to quit smoking is on-going.  I’m at about a half-pack a day. Not great, but definitely a step up from where I was. And while not as good as I’d like, I’ve maintained that level for almost a month. AND I have not smoked in my apartment in over a month (and NEVER will again!)
• I’ve greatly reduced my drinking. Not that I was ever an over-drinker, usually only having 1-2 beers in a night. The problem was frequency – one or two beers every night is not the person I wanted to be. So I’ve stopped. Oh, I still go out a couple times a week. But it’s now 2-3 nights a week as opposed to 6-7 nights.

All this change has come with difficulty. I’m not used to this much time alone. I’ve lived this way before, and the time spent in my own head scared me. That’s the big reason I have always either thrown myself into work 24×7 or thrown myself at the bars. Oddly, I expected myself to compensate this time with work, but I just haven’t. It’s the loneliness that I was afraid of before, yet for some unexplainable reason I am facing the loneliness this time. I don’t know where this is all going, but I hope it ends in a larger list of things I like about myself. Or at the very least a shorter dislikes list.

Music for my pre-mid-life crisis provided by Bon Iver

I have never actually spent Father’s Day with her since we have always lived in different states. And I won’t lie or try to pretend, it is very hard to be away from her, today or any day. All I wanted  all day was just to hug and kiss her, but I can’t. I talked to her. She told me she loves me, and she was sending me a toolbox she made in preschool for me (how stinking cute?). And she invited me to “come stay at her house sometime soon”.  

I miss her. But I know she carries my love with her. She knows her Daddy loves her, is proud of her, and thinks of her constantly. I am grateful to my father for teaching me the courage, the love, and the strength it takes to be a dad. But most of all, I am thankful to my daughter for teaching me what it truly means to be a man.

Surprisingly, I’ve been doing really well at it. I’ve cut down to a handful a day, and it’s getting easier and easier to go longer and longer without a cigarette. The most amazing part is that my determination has never waned. I know exactly where I want to get and have a plan to get there. Step 1, get to less than 5 a day. Step 2, go cold-turkey. Step 3, stay cold for at least 1 month. Step 4, let myself have the occasional but never, ever go above 3 in a day again. No excuses this time. No backing down… I’ve been on this plan for 2 weeks now and have never felt so assured of success before.

So there’s my little pep talk. With that said, I have noticed a few things over the last 2 weeks that I want to share:

• I will survive the quitting process. My cat may not (probably won’t) be so lucky
• You quit smoking and you lose ALL energy. I am so tired… How f’ing unfair is that?? I should be running marathons and bouncing off walls. Instead, all I can manage to do is lie on the couch and think about how long it’s been since my last smoke. That’s just cruel, man. It should be a war-crime or something.
• My apartment smells. I need to clean it. I would like to think that it just started to smell, but I find it odd that I didn’t notice the odor until this past week.
• I’ve been told that vicodin helps take the edge off the nicotine withdrawls. Apparently, I need to make more friends with clinical pain.
• My biggest challenge is traffic. As soon as the highway slows below 20mph, I instinctfully reach for my lighter. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have started the quitting process the same week they started repaving my primary route to work.
• I will NOT miss the smell on my clothes or hands, the taste in my mouth, the tightening of my chest, or the stigma smoking carries with it. I WILL however miss the natural alarm clock, reminding me every couple of hours to leave my desk and go outside for a few minutes.

One more for the road…

Then I started playing with Movie Maker. So you get this instead. In the words of Weezer: If you don’t like it, you can leave it. But you don’t like it, you love it!!

Well, of course Grammy wasn’t leaving without getting Maggie a new doll (warning, cellphone pic):

And I don’t know which is creepier, the doll itself or how Maggie is holding it!

Now, her mom and I usually discourage this type of stuff. Maggie has a huge imagination and already loves the simpler toys (coloring, riding her tricycle, making random household objects have long, detailed conversations…). So a $100+ doll seems a little excessive to me.

But, Maggie loves her new “bitty baby”. And as her mom put it, it is the granparents job. We’re very thankful they love her so much and want to spoil her. And she is a VERY good girl, who deserves a new doll anytime she really wants one. So if we have to see a creepy little doll looking up at us from under Maggie’s blanket at night, we will just have to endure.

Seems like a pretty straight-forward plan, but god is there some emotional baggage. This is the first time I will truly be a single parent. I’ve never spent this amount of time alone with my daughter. That’s both really, really sad and a little bit scary. I worry if I can be as good of a parent alone for a week as her mom has been every day for the last 4 and a half years.

Add on top that we are staying with my parents, and it’s just a whole new level of scary stressful. I love my mom, but she is, well… “high-maintenance”.

I should be excited, but I’m a little afraid of what the juxtaposition of my own parents (who like everyone else, I judge too harshly) and Maggie’s mom (who if you can’t tell, I have enormous respect for) will reveal about me as a father.  But I’ve realized recently that even if it means giving up the first job I ever saw as a real “career”, I need to move closer to Maggie. So the chance to be a full-time Dad, even if for only a week, can only be a good thing.

You know, I ddn’t really like this photo when I took it. But with everything going on in my life right now, it seems very fitting:

Chris didn’t notice the deception until it was too late. He was already here and I was too thirsty. Besides, all the stores were already closed. Alas , would could be done?

… So we drank them anyways.

It hasn’t always been easy being parents together, but we’ve always somehow made it work. Mollie has shown both Mag’s and me more patience than I think she ever knew she had. She has always recognized what is best for Maggie and has let that knowledge guide her. She constantly inspires me to be a better father and a better person.

I hope each of you know a Mom as amazing as my baby’s-momma, and I hope you had the chance to tell them how much you appreciate them today.