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this point forth, rooting in my mind was the pivotal understanding that I would always have to be strong.  With that understanding, a gnawing fear rankled.  My inescapable belief was that I would not be able to be the man that Jonathan required me to be.
    Compounding my chronically mercurial issues, there had also been complications with Beth’s health.  In this vortex of chaos, I became too disorganized to control my resolve and strength.  I was losing it.  My life had become a cluttered jumble of rushing from the hospital to work to empty apartment and crashing.  The only constant through these weeks had been the silent wisdom of Bailey, whose presence always calmed me.  Had it not been for my loyal friend my mental moorings would have slipped and the cancerous Shadowed Soul would have sailed me into the doldrums again.
    I was not hallucinating.  Rationally, I knew that he was not a separate entity.  I got it that the Shadowed Soul was just one aspect of me as a person.  A toxic aspect, but still he and I were one person.  It helped me to personify that negativity and imagine him as being distinct from me.  This little mind game I played gave me hope that one day I would find a means to escape his tenacious clutches.  That was what I wanted most in life, freedom from this bastard that followed me, waiting to pounce at the slightest sign of weakness.
    Since Jonathan’s birth, the Shadowed Soul lurked in the gutters of my life.  Snickering and drooling, he waited jealously to thrash and plunder the renewed beauty in my world.  Like Cerberus, Bailey’s love guarded me from my fetid moodiness.  My protector was only one dog, however, and so unless I was actively helping him in the battle then his efforts would be for naught.
    The complications around our lives spread and we were forced to make a decision that tore my confidence apart.  There simply was not enough room in our apartment for three people, even if one of those was a tiny person.  Environment, too, worried us.  Though we had made our own apartment as feng-shui cozy as we could, the neighborhood had riff-raff and drug raids periodically; some of those offenders lived on our hall.  And our building itself was a dump.
    “He’s a thrifty landlord,” said Beth graciously, over the phone. 
    “Really, he’s a cheap bastard,” I said. Peeling plaster in our bathroom depressed me.
    “Thomas, he has to first repair the sagging moisture patches in the hall,” said Beth, pushing to win her point.
    “Because he’s too cheap to fix the leaking toilet up on seven,” I replied.
    “The hall lights never work, Thomas,” argued Beth.  “What if we’re there with the baby and one of those creeps from the crack ring down the hall--” 
    “I understand, Beth,” I concurred, but the Shadowed Soul stood behind me scouting for an angle.
    “I think she just doesn’t want to live with you, Thomas,” he whispered subversively into my ear.  “This is her chance to get away from you and let you save face.”
    “Really, I just don’t want to bring our baby into a place that’s less than perfect, Thomas,” prevailed Beth.  “It’s safer and cleaner at my parents’ place.”
    “She doesn’t don’t trust you, Thomas!  Her parents told her they don’t think you can look after a baby.  They want him to be as far away from you as possible.”
    “Insidious lies,” I muttered, pushing him away and repositioning the phone.
    “What did you say?” asked Beth, surprised.
    “Nothing,” I replied.  “We’ll figure it out, Beth, don’t worry, honey.”
    “Listen to me, Thomas, the other day you knew they were talking about you,” snarled my demon reminding me of the hushed tones I had overheard between Beth and her parents.  “Urgent tones, Thomas.  You know it was you they were whispering about.”  Of course, as I had entered the kitchen at Dorothy and Pete’s the three of them had melted into all-smiles.  While a part of me knew