You wrote to explain. Alright—here's mine.

You're angry. I get that. You've been angry a long time. Maybe you have a right to be. But don't play like the word Jonah spoke was some isolated failure you can attribute to me. It's convenient, isn't it? To point to one moment, one YouTube clip, one father who "doesn't listen," and say that's the crack that broke the foundation.

But it wasn't a crack. It was a fault line. And we were both standing on it.

Let's talk about what actually happened.

Yes, Jonah heard a word from a video I didn't vet carefully enough. That's my fault. But let's not pretend as if you were screaming into the ether. I didn't tune you out. I called you out—because not everything is a crisis. Not every show is toxic. And sometimes, indeed, you did read things wrongly. Your tactic was always to close it down. Ban it. Bubble-wrap the world. Mine was to leave Jonah free to roam about, to have a go at things, sometimes to fall over. We raised children differently, yes—but not to confuse with neglect.

You say I made excuses, that I shrugged it off. Maybe I did, sometimes. But I also appeared. I was present. I am present. The problem wasn't that I didn't care—it's that I didn't parent the way you wanted me to, and to you, that equaled not parenting at all.

And if we're being honest with ourselves? You didn't leave because of something you said. You left because you were already done. That moment just gave you the story. A neat, moral reason you could look at and say, "This is why." But things don't fall apart in the space of one afternoon. They come apart slowly. We were coming apart. And instead of trying to sew anything back together, you just upped stakes and departed.

You tell me that you stayed awake that night, wondering how so easy it is to get something hateful down. I know that. But this is what you omitted: how difficult it is to get out of your head that you're always right and I'm always the risk. The liability. The irresponsible one who doesn't understand. You never once gave me the benefit of the doubt. You saddled me with responsibility as the irrevocable consequence of being the father you didn't agree with.

I'm still his dad. And no matter how many rules you inscribe, how you line the walls with padding around him, Jonah is still living in a world with words and people and chaos. My job is to get him ready for it—not erase it all before he even sees it.

I'll just keep on doing that. In my home, in my style.

I'm not the bad person in your story, Amanda.

And I'm done being quiet while you tell stories about me like that.

Also, you guys tell me if i am right about the vid being ok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjS4Yrmif6Q