And I wept.

The next step.

There I was, sitting in the dining room I converted into my office. I was writing. I was thinking. Thinking about all the mistakes I made as a kid. All the mistakes I’ve made as an adult. All the mistakes I’ve made as a parent. I began thinking about my father. All the trouble I gave him. The attitude. The disrespect. I thought about how hard life had been for me. I thought about how hard life must have been for him. I thought about all the things I wanted but never got. I thought about all the hard work he put into what I had. And then I wept.

I’m an empathetic person. I cry a lot, but I don’t often weep. When talking about something I love or care about, I often have tears streaming down my face. Weeping is more than tears. If tears are the rain, weeping is the storm.

The emotion washed over me. I felt a weight on my chest. Breathing became intentional rather than involuntary. Thought after thought raced through my head. And I wept. Uncontrollably, I wept. It felt like all the pain, anger, and sadness I locked away was trying to escape me all in one moment. Then my wife walked in.

“What’s going on?” She said with concern. I didn’t know what to say. Looking back into her eyes, I replied, “I. I. I.” I struggled to speak. I gasped for each breath, trying to balance life with the flood of emotion pouring out of me. “I’m not sure. I just feel…. like I don’t know what I am doing.” She walked over and put her hand on my back. I laid my head on her chest. She rubbed circles on my back, and I continued to weep until the flood was dry. Looking down at me, she said, “Are you ok?” Wiping the wetness from my face, I replied, “I think so.”

She walked away and I continued to think. This wasn’t the first time I found myself weeping. When each of my grandfathers passed, I found myself weeping. But that felt normal. Expression over a loss is more acceptable than random, uncontrollable weeping. When I was divorced, I wept a lot. But this felt normal too. Painful, but normal.

About two years prior, I first wept uncontrollably without understanding. We were living in our old house in Mansassas at the time. My oldest stepson was a teenager, and I was struggling as a parent. It was morning. I woke up before Vanessa. I was thinking about all the issues we were having. I was thinking about all the time I missed with him. I was thinking about all the time I wasted being angry with him. I was thinking about all the ways I failed him. Looking at my wife sleeping next to me, I thought about how I had failed her. I thought about how they both might be better off without me. I thought about my anger and mistakes. And I wept. I thought about the gun in the closet. I thought about how I could just make it all go away. I could relieve the pain, move on and let them free of my failure.

Then Vanessa woke up. “What’s going on?” I struggled to speak. I just wept. “Come here.” She said while pulling me closer. She asked me questions. I can’t remember exactly what about now. “Is this…bothering you? How about that…? What can I do?” With my face buried in her chest, I mumbled, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I just feel like a failure.” We talked for some time, and then I left to see my dad.

On the drive to Gainesville, I thought about what I was going to say. I went through sentence by sentence in my head. But when I got there, I wept. We walked my parent’s property and sat down on a picnic table near our old log cabin. My dad built it, and my brother and I helped when we were in elementary school. It was a windy day. My hair was blowing in my face. I told him how much I was struggling. How I didn’t feel like I knew what to do. He talked about some of his difficulties, his ups, and downs. Letting his guard down momentarily, he says, “I don’t know, Jeff. You do the best you can.”

We walked from the picnic table back toward the house. We stopped near this big tree in the yard. When I was a kid, I would throw a baseball at the tree. Fielding the grounders, the harder I threw the ball, the harder it would bounce back. Setting the memory aside, I asked my dad what his objective was as a father. He told me he wanted me to be self-sufficient. To be able to take care of myself and others one day. He told me that he worried when I was 19 and opening a business. He said he didn’t have to worry once he saw it built. We stood there and talked about Mom and how she was his best friend. My dad isn’t an expressive person ordinarily, but his face always lights up when he speaks of her. I remember it from my childhood. We made our way to my car, I opened the door and pulled out a small gun lock box with my 9mm inside. I handed it to him, asking, “Could you hold on to this?” He took it. I got in my car and drove home.

On the drive home, I thought about Vanessa and how she was my best friend. I thought about how much I worried about Gabe, my oldest. I thought, if I was gone, would I be freeing them of my failure or freeing myself of my responsibility? I thought maybe I didn’t need to worry so much. Maybe he worried enough for the both of us. Maybe he just needed more help. I thought about what I could do better to help him. I thought back to my worst moments, and I thought about what my present self would tell my past self.

Back in the dining room, I finished drying my face, closed my laptop, walked into the family room, and sat in my recliner. I pulled my phone from my pocket, opened the Word app, and wrote this.

My feelings have always been my greatest strength and weakness. When I feel love and happiness, I am a joy. When I feel sadness, I rage with anger. Over the years, I started to bottle my sadness. I sometimes went days, weeks, or months pretty mellow, expressing joy and suppressing everything else. But the sadness would eventually return and seep into my soul. The bad thoughts would start, and I wouldn’t know what to do. I would feel crushed by the failure, and I would erupt. Afterward, I would struggle to forgive myself.

After visiting with my father that windy day, I made a commitment to faith. I decided to listen and see what it was all about. Our family began attending church regularly. Going to church taught me to understand and forgive.

This time when I wept, it was different. This time I felt like I was going to be ok. This time I felt like I knew what to do next. This time after expressing my emotion to my best friend, I decided to express my emotion through words. This gave me a sense of control over the uncontrollable. I couldn’t change how I feel but I could change how I process and express my feelings. I read my poem over and over again. Reflecting on my words. “Paralayzed and stuck in the same place” I needed to forgive. I needed to forgive myself for the way I treated my father. I needed to forgive myself for how I treated my family and friends.

Life wasn’t as easy as I liked to think it was. I had been through a lot. Losing my grandfather freshman year. Losing a classmate junior year. Getting divorced. Losing my grandfather. And I didn’t always handle it the best. But those are stories for another day when I have the emotional bandwidth and time to share. When I wept on that windy day, I began to take responsibility for my actions. Sitting in the dining room weeping was the next step in my journey. It was the day I went from expression to reflection and back to expression. It was the day I got a handle on myself and who I was. Over the next year, I would use writing as a tool to better myself and my family. I would listen to my father and wife. I would focus on forgiveness and growth. And work through the sadness and pain.