Hold Fast Project with Jarryd Casey

I will start with a message that I wrote to my daughter.  

To my beautiful baby girl,

 Today has been without a doubt the hardest day of my life so far. Every day I'm without you my heart aches more and more. I am going on my third week without seeing you, holding you or even hearing your voice. I feel like I'm losing this battle of emotions today, but i know i will become stronger and i know that soon i will have you in my arms again. 

But for now i just hope you know how much daddy loves you and how much he misses you. I hope you will know that i will not let you live a life without a father, and that i will always fight for you no matter what. I knew from the moment i first held you in my arms that you were my reason. You are my reason to live, my reason to love and to be happy. You are the reason for all that i have been through in my life, so that i can teach you how to be kind when you may feel you shouldn't be. To teach you how to find happiness in the things that may cause you pain and sadness. To teach you how to learn from the injustices that life may deal you. To teach you how to love all these precious steps of life even though you may hate them at the time. To teach you how to keep fighting when you feel like everything is too hard, because thats what we do. You are my daughter and you are a fighter just like daddy and nothing is ever too hard for us to handle.

I love you more than anything in this world. More than the ocean and the waves, more than the sound of the strings on my guitar, I love you more than this life itself. I promise i will keep fighting for you until things are right. I promise you i will always be here for you no matter what happens, you will never know a life without your father.

Ive got you forever my girl.
I love you, Daddy xx

I am the type of guy that laughs when life seems to ‘kick you when you're down’, when the shit keeps piling up.. get a shovel kind of guy. I have had my fair share of ups and downs with a few significant low points in my life, and this was one of them. A young father, I had it all. I had a big group of mates, my brothers, I had the bikes, the cars, the little white house with the white picket fence near the beach. I had a great job that allowed me to spend a lot of time with my family and doing the things that i loved.

But of all these things, there was only one thing that kept me here, my daughter. My whole world, the entirety of my heart and happiness, my reason. This perfect life that i had worked so hard for and that i was so proud of was ending before it started and deep down i knew that, but never the less you just keep going and holding on for dear life, it will all work itself out right? Thats what i thought anyway and i remember so clearly the night, looking at myself in the mirror, shaking and crying, asking myself who the fuck have i become. I had sacrificed so much of myself that i didn’t even recognise know who i was anymore. At this point i would be in tears in the mornings on my way to work, do my job as normal, cry the whole drive home only to put on the brave face for my daughter who was only just 1 year old at the time. This went on for weeks. I was doing everything right, I was hitting the gym 5 times a week, i was eating healthy, i was riding harleys and working on my car, i was spending more time with my daughter then ever, and getting that quality time in with my family. But when i wasn’t with my daughter i felt like i had nothing. I felt like no-one else gave a shit about me and the demons i was battling day in day out, like it either didn’t make sense or they just couldn’t give a fuck. People tend to ‘say’ how much they care.. But how often is it that they show the care. That they would sit and listen to you. Maybe even comfort you or reassure you that everything will be alright?

And it was this night that it all hit me. I’d had enough. I was on my way home from a night-shift, picking out a tree that my truck would impale, completely lost in myself, like i wasn’t even there. It was almost like a third person experience, watching myself… But all i could think about was that i had my baby girl at home sleeping in her cot, that she would wake up a fatherless child, I could never do that to her. And so i made it home and it took every ounce of me not to wake her, i remember sitting beside the cot just watching her sleep, listening to her tiny, almost silent breaths and thanking whatever the fuck it was that got me home. This was the night i knew something had to change, looking into my own bloodshot, teary eyes asking myself who the fuck have i become.. and what are you going to do about it.

A short while after i moved my family into a new home in a desperate last attempt to keep my family together, the new beginning we all needed. It was short lived and it soon occurred to me that it was a new place with all the same old problems. My family was then at the point where we would go our seperate ways. Life was good. I was seeing my daughter plenty and she would stay with me from Thursday to Monday every fortnite. We would always be out at the beach or the park, around seeing the boys, working on the bikes and cars. We’d be down at Miami Marketta watching the bands play as she would dance and play with the other kids. I was truly happy and I must of been the proudest dad in the world, just me and my daughter. Nothing could wipe the smile off my face. All the days coming home to an empty house, the hours spent just looking at her room, wishing i could here her voice or the sounds of her little footsteps running up the hallway, it never got to me how i thought it would. I think it was  because i knew i would be seeing her again soon. But this was also short lived… Little did i know i was about to be swallowed up by life itself. I always heard the stories of “take a mans child from him and watch him crumble.” My biggest fear, and now I’m right in the middle of it. Weeks at a time without seeing or even hearing the sound of my daughters voice. Constantly begging to just see her. I would be publicly embarrassed waiting at a park to see her like a criminal, only to see her for an hour. I went from father of the year to an apparent drug-addict, alcoholic, child abuser, incapable parent just like that. I spent my daughters 2nd birthday in a visitation centre, along with my own birthday and Fathers day. I spent hours upon hours trying to prove my innocence, completely dumb-founded by what was happening. “Welcome to the Family Court System” they reckon. Where paying money to see your own child is normal, where you are guilty until proven innocent. A place where the lives of men are completely destroyed without an ounce of remorse, a place where the lives of children are completely disregarded. 

2021 was the year from hell, loss after loss after loss. There didn’t seem to be an end in sight. I was losing people I believed were my ‘brothers’ by the day, the betrayal was unthinkable. I was close to financial ruin, I was in constant pain, the sleepless nights, the eating disorder that would come and go. Fuck i couldn’t even think about it let alone talk about it without losing it.. Living on photos and videos from my camera roll. I was drowning. But it was always the same thought as it was on that night, I have a daughter that i refuse to let grow up without a father. I had a whiteboard in my office at the time and my mother wrote on it “Lose the battle, Win the war.” And that is exactly what I did. And every battle that i lost, i grew stronger, i trained harder, i learnt to put my energy in the right places. I learnt that as a man it is okay to cry and to be vulnerable. But the most important thing is to back yourself. If YOU believe in YOU, the rest is history. There is still a long way to go, but i am now spending more and more time with my daughter. I lost a lot of close friends along the way, but made some great ones too. I will be forever grateful for the people that helped and stood by me through this experience and will continue to share my story and help other men and fathers fighting the same battles.

All i can say is never, ever fucking give up. When life’s got you by the throat, bite back.

Jarryd Casey.