The day of my departure arrived. My little girl looked at me with tears in her eyes. ‘I love you, Daddy,’ she said while giving me the card she had drawn for me. It was full of love hearts and featured a photo of the home I was about to leave behind. She probably thought that I was going on a holiday to see my family. I saw her broken heart, and the guilt amplified this image a thousand times. I wanted to tell her that I will mend her heart when I am strong again.
Jake was too young. He was clueless as to what was happening. They had no idea that Daddy was leaving because Daddy was not living here anymore. It broke me to leave my seven- and nine-year-old kids behind, but I had to go. I hugged them tightly, wept all the tears I had left in my body. This broken heart of mine had gone through pain beyond what words can define. I went back to my temporary home to pack my bike. There was no-one to hear my cries of despair. I struggled through every heartbeat but I still did not want to accept defeat.
Time after time my heart had been ripped apart, often by my own doing, and I did not know if it was still my heart or just a life machine with chambers full of regrets. It seemed too shattered to be restored. I looked up at my wife with love and tenderness. ‘You have torn my heart apart beyond belief, there is no relief from this pain and torture,’ I felt like telling her, but I didn’t. I knew it would be futile.
I was stuck in the jail I had built around myself, brick by brick, soaking in regrets. I decided it was better not to see my kids at all for a while instead of seeing so little of them. Leaving for Europe to be with my family there seemed the right thing to do and I took the risk knowing how much it would affect that little blonde girl with light blue eyes and my sensitive, sweet little boy. I was afraid that they would lose me if I stayed.
I often thought it would be a nice way to leave this world by swimming out in the ocean, to soak in its beauty until it was time to surrender into Poseidon’s arms. I was happy to retire into the deep ocean—the beautiful banners of green and the mosaic of blues—and have the scent of the spray of the last rolling billow as incense at my burial. The lullaby of the anthem of the winds would filter through my hair, my grief would turn into offerings of love and my tears would mix with the element in which I would finally feel safe. I was happy for my soul to leave my body in the eternal crystalline water of the deep ocean.