Two Punks In Love

Old Promises

Trace

They all talked and talked and talked, here in this Swiss hotel. Leed, Ashlynn, Adam, Matt. Yap, yap, yap.

For hours and hours, because I just couldn't get it—what Leed and Ashlynn were telling me. That Kat didn't check herself into the medical spa down the road because she regretted a moment of temporary insanity.

No. She wasn't inexcusably drunk or having a damn breakdown when she married Colin. As she explained it to Leed and Ashlynn, she meant to marry Colin and worse, intends to remain married to him, as some kind of experiment.

Finally I get it, and I get scared because getting scared is easier than being completely fucking devastated. Getting scared lets me get angry. So I start ranting to Riley on the phone about lawyers and parental rights. Matt listens to this from his place on the couch in this suite we have rented, watching me, one boot kicked up on other knee.

Finally, after I've got Riley as worked up as I am, because you know...brothers in shared betrayal and all, and we are waging the custody battle to end all custody battles in our minds, and I pass by Matt for the hundredth time, he kicks out one leg straight, barring my path.

He stands up, snatches the phone, says, "Riley, you're not helping, and this isn't about your marriage. Get a fucking grip."

He hangs up on Riley, kicks Leed, Ashlynn and Adam out of the suite and says, "Sit your ass down and listen."

Thus begins our conversation.

Matt says, "Son, I know something about this. Believe me when I tell you, you will never win back your family by making your kids a tug of war."

I say, "What am I supposed to do? They are married. Mr and Mrs. Dickwad. If Dickwad pulls a Ross and signs the kids' birth certificates, he'll be their legal father. I'll have to sue for my rights—"

"Surrender the game," Matt says. "Let go of the rope."

"Are you fucking kidding me?!?!? Those are my kids!"

"Surrender," Matt says again. "Surrender the battle, win the war."

"It's easy for you to say when you didn't even know about me—"

"It's not easy to say, and it's hard as fuck to do. And I'm not talking about me surrendering you," Matt growls. "Look, it's not something we talk about, but Annie and I went through some hard times—some real hard times—when the kids were little. I was immature. I was a drunk. I was irresponsible. I was absent as a husband and a father, a lot of the time. And I was a rock star, and I justified all my bad husbanding and parenting as part of my job. My mess went on for years like a bad telenovela. It makes your mess of a few months look like a chaotic music video in comparison. 

"Annie did everything in her power to wake me up. The only thing that did, was losing my family. She left me, wouldn't let me see the kids for a year, Trace. And I wanted to fight her. I wanted to fight her on it so bad. But I didn't want only my kids back. I wanted my wife back. I wanted my family back. And I couldn't win them back from a place of drunken anger, screaming and cursing that I had a motherfucking right to see my own goddamn kids, as I stumbled around in the front yard of the house she locked me out of, sucking on down a bottle of Jack.

"No.  My sponsor gave me the same advice I'm giving you. I had to surrender. You can call it some AA bullshit if you want, but I surrendered. Surrendered my anger and surrendered my rights and surrendered my fight. And it worked. Anger gave way to discourse and discourse gave way to understanding and understanding blossomed into...everything. Everything Annie and I didn't have between us before and everything you see in us now."