But love isn’t always enough.
Sometimes two people can love each other and still be terrible for one another.
That was what I kept trying to tell them.
If being together was destroying them, they needed to walk away.
I told Andy that.
I told Nikki that.
I wish they had listened.
Because eventually, something changed in Andy.
The man I had known for years seemed to disappear little by little.
He became distant.
He stopped being the same father.
He didn’t seem like the funny person everyone knew.
He seemed overwhelmed by his own life.
I am not a doctor.
I cannot tell you exactly what was happening inside his mind.
I can only tell you what I witnessed.
And what I witnessed scared me.
Then came August 17th.
The day everything changed.
I still struggle to put that day into words.
People online want simple explanations.
They want one reason.
One argument.
One moment.
One person to blame for everything that came before.
But life is rarely that simple.
What happened that day came after months and years of problems.
Years of unresolved pain.
Repeated breakups.
Repeated reconciliations.
Alcohol.
Emotional turmoil.
Arguments.
Children caught in the middle.
And two people who seemed unable to find a healthy way to separate from each other.
