We all can rationalize our bad decisions and give excuses why we committed errors in judgment. I don’t wish to live in the past, but I do not ever want to forget why I may have chosen a wrong path.

Even though I may have given the impression that I was promiscuous in my early years of military life, I was not. The military is much like any job or career. The workday has set hours and one goes to work and then goes home. Many military bases are like small rural communities. Some are in isolated areas. Even though I spoke of meeting women upon their arrival at the base, there were not many women.

I went in the military to start a new life. But as my mother would say, If you play with a puppy, it will lick you in the face. My father’s version was, If you sit in a barbershop you will eventually get a haircut. I fathered a child as a teenager, and her mother was waiting for me back home. We had planned a life together yet I was in the arms of another women. I was hesitant about telling this part of my story because there remains a sense of guilt that I hurt others by my selfish ways. The shame and guilt go away when I address the issues and honestly accepted my wrongdoings. When I jacked up my slacks and said, “I messed up”, I can then move on. But to share my story and my pain with others is a new journey. The road is tough when the fingers of fault are pointing directly at me. However, I’ve grown tired of many depicting mothers with children by different men as some sort of women with flawed character or low morals. I was involved with two wonderful women that just happened to run into a guy like me.

While playing house with my new lover, we brought another child into the world. I wasn’t man enough to tell either of the women about each other, so I maintained two separate lives. I was close enough to my home town that I could drive home when I choose to do so. I lived this lie for 2 years before everything came tumbling down.

I had become so comfortable with living like this that I even drove my second family to my parents’ home to let them visit with their new grandchild. I put them in an awful position. My father would give me a look of deep concern and ask me what the hell I was doing. My mother was forced to take the route of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Everyone paid a price when the news broke.

After visiting my parents one weekend, I decided to stop at a local horse racing track on my way out of town. My skills at picking winners wasn’t very good, so I decided to leave after the 5th race. I was with Rita* (*name changed) and my son. As we approached the car, a voice said, “How are you doing, Carey?” It was Debbie*, the mother of my first child. She had a gun in her hand, a 2-shot derringer. I was stunned, I walked toward her. My son ran behind me saying, “Daddy, Daddy!”  He didn’t know there was danger; he just couldn’t understand why I was walking off from him.

At that moment my life changed, and so did the lives of several others.