Uncharted Territory

Corey

"Seriously, now parenting classes?" I tossed the envelope addressed to me onto the kitchen table. There was always something new the lawyer thought would give me an edge during the upcoming custody battle. He had informed me during our last meeting that I was not looking like the ideal parent for Shane to spend the majority of his time with. Not only was I never married to his mother, but my job is dangerous, and I have a very high likelihood of being sent overseas with the possibility of never returning. I'm an Army man, specifically an infantryman. I work full time with the Utah National Guard, meaning I work four days a week, ten hour shifts. Right now my job isn't terribly dangerous, as I train incoming soldiers, which ends up being more dangerous for them than it is for me. 

Shane is about to turn one. His mother, Amber, and I had been together for about six months when she announced for the first time that she was pregnant. Trying to do the right thing, despite my family's protests, I asked her to marry me and we started making wedding plans. I didn't necessarily want to rush into getting married before the baby was born, because I wanted Amber to have the time to plan her dream wedding. When I told her this, she was extremely irate, insisting that we had to get married before her baby bump started showing. Lucky me, I was notified that I had to leave for six weeks for training out in Oklahoma shortly after she made this statement, so there was no way we could have gotten hitched before I had to leave. While I was gone, Amber claimed to have had a miscarriage, but I have my suspicions of if this was true or not, as she was barely even upset, and talks about the event like it wasn't a big deal. A part of me now believes that she wasn't even pregnant to begin with. 

When I returned home, I decided to follow along with still planning the wedding. Amber was the only woman so far who had somewhat tolerated my personality rather than trying to change it. Low and behold, about two months later in the heat of wedding plans, I walked in the front door after work to find Amber sobbing in the bathroom. She showed me a positive pregnancy test. I was ecstatic, she was not. She bawled about how the wedding would have to be postponed and how her family would disown her for having a baby before she was married. This also correlates to how I now believe that the previous pregnancy was a hoax. 

Nine months later my little man was born, and my life took on a whole new meaning. I was able to get a few weeks off of work, and spent them getting up in the middle of the night every time Shane woke for feedings, diaper changes, and the need for someone to cradle him back to sleep. Not once did Amber get up with him at night, even after I went back to working. She seemed uninterested with him, and completely focused on her wedding plans. 

We began to bicker a lot more than was normal for us, and both her and I threatened to call off the wedding on several different occasions. I came home from work one evening to find the apartment completely torn apart. There were clothes strewn everywhere, dishes pulled out of the cabinets with the doors left open, and trash scattered throughout the house. I became extremely worried, as Amber and Shane were nowhere in sight, and Amber would not answer her phone. As I was about to call the police, a glimmer in the corner of my eye caught my attention. On the kitchen table was Amber's ring, sitting on top of a letter with my name on it. She had decided to leave me and take Shane with her, she would be filing papers in the court to receive child support each month, and she never wanted me to ever see Shane again. What she didn't know then is that I don't give up on family without a fight, and Shane is family. 

After my attempts to talk through a solution with Amber were unsuccessful, I hired a lawyer, and started the process of beginning the custody battle on my own. Our court date is set for April of next year, and my lawyer keeps finding new programs, courses, classes, conferences and all sorts of other whatever for me to take part in. He says it will make me look like I'm trying to be the father that is capable of handling a child on his own, and that an arsenal of classes and courses backing me up will help with that. 

I get to have Shane on Friday mornings and afternoons, all that I could get out of Amber. I think she's honestly afraid that I might win this battle, what with her long history of arrests for drugs, assaults, and a couple DUIs on her record as well. Not to mention, I'm the one who takes Shane to every doctor's appointment he needs to go to because Amber "faints" at the smell of the office. Now I know that I still am not painted in a very favorable light either, as I am currently on the deployment list. I just want my son to have the best life possible, that's all.

My lawyer has stated several times that I could potentially look like a better fit for Shane if I would settle down with a nice girl. This doesn't mean that I have to be married by April by any means, just preferably engaged. However, this has proven to be much more of a challenge than even I thought it would be. I don't believe in hiding my life or who I am from someone, especially when they ask a question such as, "What do you do for work?" or, "What's one thing I should know about you?" I'm sorry, but dropping the Army bomb is more than most girls can handle, let alone the 'I also have a kid who I'm trying to get custody of' bomb. Plus, I don't think it's really fair to have an underlying reason for starting a life with someone new, if that person were to find out they would probably feel really hurt and even used in a sort of way. 

My friend, Ashton, suggested a few months ago that I try the online dating scene. He was currently using one of the many apps, and the dude was always talking to someone new. I felt extremely skeptical of apps like those though, because I felt like you had to be a certain level of desperate to actually even use one of them. Was I right? Oh yes, yes I most certainly was. I finally downloaded one, set up a profile, and then was appalled at what I was seeing. Most girls were on there looking either for hookups or a steady stream of compliments, neither of which I was particularly interested in handing out. I asked several girls on actual dates, only a few actually said yes, and only one had continued to talk to me afterwards (which, sadly, I was no longer interested in her after we met). I still have the app downloaded, and I only ever open it when I'm extremely bored. 

One night I was having a particularly hard time falling asleep, so I was dinking around on my phone when I found myself scrolling through this app. I was swiping left just about as fast as the first picture would pop up, when one profile in particular caught my attention. She was pretty, but in a simple sort of way. She had shoulder length blonde hair and was wearing a black t-shirt paired with a camo-printed ball cap. What had initially caught my attention though were the big, dark brown doe-eyes. Rather than swiping left, I swiped up to see more pictures. One in front of what I'm assuming was the Grand Canyon, a selfie taken by her in the front seat that captured her friends in the back seat as well as the driver, and the last a picture of her in a black dress with her hair in an up-do, for which I assumed was for a formal event of some sort. I contemplated for a moment, then swiped right. Nothing happened, which meant there was no connection. Damn it.