Heartwound

I thought maybe my heart had already died. Or worse, I never had one.

My dad had a severe heart condition. I remember when I was a kid my dad underwent then-radical open heart surgery surviving the newest in medical advances triple bypass.

Later, I thought perhaps they actually took OUT his heart, replacing it with a robot heart. That would explain it. Why he acted as though one was useful or in the way.

Was I like that?

When my girls' dad became a burden to feed and a terror to have in the house, drunk, high, spending money on booze and pot that should have fed and clothed our kids, did I selfishly ditch him? Did I leave a human being to rot for my own needs? Even though that need was the need to care for my kids only without a worthless, dragging anchor, but also a piranha? Taking food from his kids' mouths so he could get stoned?

There are people in this world who believe, or at least believed then, that I was wrong for doing that. Sometimes, I am one of them.

Perhaps history, and $60,000 in arrears in child support over the last 10 years, has borne me out on that one. Perhaps not, to some. I imagine he sits somewhere in a bar, or someone's couch, commiserating how bad and evil I am, how I done HIM wrong and I am the evil overlady who spirited his beloved daughters away from him. Asshole.

Was I wrong for that?