I am happy, but not ok

So, I've been trying not to write about this, but it has come to my attention that if I am not honest I cannot be true, and part of that includes writing out the stuff that makes it impossible for me to sit through a father child moment in a movie dry-eyed, or to ever see things in that same old simple way I thought would last forever before I got divorced.
Part of honesty with self and others is giving voice to those things I'd rather not entertain or allow my friends to see for fear I might become the bitter person I know I could've been and refuse to become.  I don't want to express so much anger into a world that drowns in it daily.  I don't want to be a victim and I don't want to be disillusioned anymore, because I'm older and wiser and I remember how to enjoy my life in spite of all of those things now.  But I'm finding my repression of these things is suffocating me in tiny increments every day.  Sometimes I can feel the fingers around my throat, squeezing, and sometimes it's just a thought in the back of my mind unnoticed, but it's there.  I can't allow that to happen any more than I can stop singing to myself in public, or facing into the sun and closing my eyes when it comes out from behind a cloud, or pushing my hands up into a warm rain.  These things I do because something in me loves them and cannot go without them for long and will not allow me to be jaded against them, or rather, I love them so much that I refuse to let go of them.  So I will write this out.
I have two daughters.  Their names are Emily and Lola, and even as I type their names here, my eyes lose focus with tears I know I should probably suppress but won't.  I want to preserve that so I will be reminded to live life to its fullest when I am with them, because it's so easy to be swept up by the concerns of the day now.  There are times when I forget, even in the face of so much loss, that I need to be in the moment every moment that I am with them.  I am a person who KNOWS that every moment can shine, and yet so often nowadays I find myself blinded to what I know.
At Emily's dedication I said I'd found my purpose because she'd given it to me just by being born.  My heart was broken for the very first time just days after she came to us.  I knew what it meant to be driven.
With Lola I was given back my heart to learn to truly see and feel the world again.  Her simple joy at every thing she touched overflowed from the second she first opened her eyes.
I would do anything to protect them, anything to save them, and almost anything to see them realize their dreams and to spare them the misery that I went through, but that wasn't enough.
They aren't here with me now.
I don't hear their footsteps echoing across the floors, or their voices whispering in the next room, or even shrieking sisterly indignation at some new outrage.  They don't live with me.
I used to drive the 160 or so miles one-way every weekend to meet them, but since the divorce it is every other weekend.  I am now a part-time father, and a paycheck.  I am not what I set out to be, nor am I satisfied with my new role, but it would seem my former wife is pleased with this new arrangement.  To what end I don't know, and for what reason.  To what purpose do I owe my exclusion from my little loves?  She has no answer for me, only court documents and measured tone.
I am a man without so much of my purpose.  A man without so much of my heart.  I do not dwell in these things for I have no wish to be bitter, but if I gave full concert to my grief I would be broken.  I busy myself with things that I must do, and places I must go, and the glimmers of joy that I find between visits with my dearest little ones.  Life is quite good, and I enjoy it well, but always in the back of my mind is when will I see them again?  When will I hold them close and hear them say they love me and listen to their contented voices playing down the hall?
I've still the capacity and hope for love.  I daresay I've met someone who makes me very happy, but I cannot take it farther, nor can she for now.  We will not compromise a romance over loneliness, nor chase it to oblivion with recklessness.  So it is, and I AM happy, but so heavy-hearted lonely for my little loves.  I miss them dearly.