My Verbally Abusive Marriage

An article in Time reports that “women who said they were abused, 54% characterized their partners as very reliable, and 21% said that their partners had many positive characteristics.”

There is so much to learn about abusive relationships. I’m not surprised by the findings. For some reason, I want to believe Will is reliable, when all evidence points to the fact that he was reliable in only one or two areas that concerned me. Mainly one – I could count on him to bring home the bacon. And now that we’re divorcing, that does not concern me any longer.

Likewise, I believe Will has many positive characteristics. Unfortunately, I’m not the one who typically gets to see them. Unless I’m observing him interact with others. But I know they’re there.

I’ve already texted my goodnights to the boys, but I cannot sleep despite the fact that I am pooped. Exhausted really; stress is a bitch.

Something is gnawing at me, but I am not certain what that something could be. Typically, I’d write about what I thought it may be, and then narrow it down to the root cause. But I don’t feel safe in doing that right now.

I don’t want to share yet.

Will told me the other day that I “can’t make it” unless certain financial conditions were met. He is concerned that I want the house. He can’t see any other way for me to be so confident in my ability to create financial success unless I’m planning on “going for the house”.

Typical.

I am hopeful, therefore I am confident. Unlike the hope I felt as I tried to force Will to see the abuse in our marriage, this hope doesn’t depend on his (or another person’s) actions. This hope depends on me. It’s exhilarating to have my future in my own hands, untethered and free. There is a distinct difference in the anxiety I feel now, facing my future alone, than the anxiety I used to feel at the sound of his truck pulling into the drive.

I am not naive enough to think this will be easy. It would be nice if some great hand would reach down from the sky to snatch a long lost relative who left me (and my sister, mother, and grandmas) millions. But as much fun as it is to consider that innane possibility, I do not lose myself in it.

This isn’t going to be easy. There is no sure-fire way to guarantee my success; but there’s also no way to guarantee my failure. Will hasn’t believed in me in a very long time, but his insinuations no longer cause me to crawl into a hole and hide. Now, hearing him say what he says causes me to divert my attention from him and pay attention to the light in my own heart.

It feels … strange. And good.

The most I can do is simply START moving away from him.

I’m doing that. I’m not revealing my actions yet because they’re not his business; I don’t feel like giving him my secrets anymore. Unfortunately, that means that I cannot give my secrets to YOU either.

Yes, I am slightly worried and a tad fearful. Who wouldn’t be? But I know I will make this work. I have a plan.

Kunjii’s comment got me to thinking about my dependency on Will.

Surely there is more to it than financial dependency (fear of making money on my own is a factor because I haven’t done it in so long).

The one area in which I did have independence most of the time was with our finances. I know how to invest and have picked solid stocks/mutual funds in the days before returning to the military. I upped our retirement savings amount every year and when he would get promoted. I bought my first car alone last year and an investment home a few years ago which we sold for a huge profit. I’ve chosen services, balanced bank accounts, and set aside money to use in the businesses I owned and for hobbies he enjoyed. I’ve budgeted for groceries, gas, the kid’s expenses and pleasures, et cetera based on one income – his.

There was always money for what we wanted, not always exactly when we wanted it, but for what we wanted, in part due to my money management skills but also due to his mechanical and other “handy” talents. (I swear, that man can do everything from repairing a carburetor to building a garage. The only thing he doesn’t like to touch is electricity, but he knows how to work with it.) No one is perfect. My spending habits are sometimes flawed. But how many families with the parents pushing 40 do you know who have survived and thrived for almost two decades on one person’s income? I think we did a pretty good job. I know how to handle money (not implying that he doesn’t, just that I know I do).

Many of our fights, toward the end, were due to money. He thought we should have more. He thought I wasted it all. He disagreed with my choice of our cellular phone company. He told me to stop paying them; I wouldn’t because it was my credit that would take the hit if I defaulted. Soon after we split, he told me, “You know, I make damn good money,” and I said, “I’m glad you finally see that.” How did he not know how much money he made?

I know there has got to be something else, something besides financial dependency. Some good reason for hoping we’ll get this family back together.

There are the obvious, although increasingly idealistic reasons such as

• I love him, I love the idea of “our family” in the traditional sense
• I don’t want our children to suffer from a broken home (despite the fact that it was “broken” when we lived together)
• I think our boys would be better off if Will and I could make peace instead of war; fall back in love, show them what a good relationship looks like…
• I promised him “until death do we part”

There are things I know are NOT reasons such as

• Fear of being alone (I’ve done that many times with his deployments and training)
• Fear of never loving again, fear of not being loved by another man (There were men before, there could be men again – I know I am not “unlovable”)

So what is the basis of my dependency on Will? My latest correspondence with the voices said, “We are dragging you forward and you want to stay in dysfunctional familiarity.”

I can’t argue with that. I do want to cling to SOMETHING familiar, no matter how dysfunctional my rational mind knows it to be.

Most things, the things I held dearest, are different now. My kids are spending half of their time away from me. My husband is not my husband. Nothing is “ours” – its divided into “mine” and “his” – and that change alone implies vast changes in thinking.

Many thoughts that used to revolve around Will and my family are pointless now. I must cut off thoughts of Will because, technically, he is no longer my concern. Thoughts of my family are vastly different; now family is my children and me. Period. Well, outside of the fact that Will is and always will be their father, he is no longer in my definition of “my family.”

I try not to care or concern myself with Will’s moods or possible feelings; it is difficult because my every behavior has depended on deciphering how he feels (mostly in an attempt to avoid his anger). Trying not to care about his feelings takes up more time than caring about them; in time, this will change.

I am learning how to feel what I feel, decipher what I want, after years and years of depending on Will’s opinion to tell me what to do, what I should be feeling, and what to think. He would tell me when I had a “right” to be angry, when I should feel ashamed, when I should respect his actions and how I should show that respect.

He would let me know when it was okay to be loving or to be silly (well, grown women aren’t supposed to be silly, but he would tolerate it from time to time). He would tell me when my behavior embarrassed him and what I needed to think or do differently to keep him happy. By comparing me to other wives (or maybe his mom or some imaginary feminine goddess), he determined what I should be doing, feeling, saying…and it seemed that if I wasn’t behaving as he thought I should, he would explode. He told me he put me on a pedestal, and right or wrong it was my duty as his wife to stay there.

Now, I am at a loss as to how to feel, what to think and, at times, what to do.

The voices also tell me that we must be separate in order to learn that we’re individuals. That’s what I’m trying to do. It is hard. Sometimes I long for the “dysfunctional familiarity” and am willing to temporarily erase my memory and substitute the dream.

When I’m with Will, I am told what is required of me. I suppose I miss that aspect very much. In some ways, being told who I am is superior to determining who I am on my own. It’s definitely easier in many regards, especially during the “bad” times when soothing his temper was merely a matter of putting on a mask. I’d put on the mask not so much to deceive him as to deceive myself into believing I should be what he said to be.

At the court house last Wednesday, he commented that I wasn’t the woman he married. I agreed.

But I don’t yet know who I am. I’ve been dependent on him to tell me.

On October 18, 1992, after six months of marriage, I wrote

“He married me to fight me, it seems. Beat me down and make me less than I am. That infuriates me. THAT is what scares me. What if he does win? Where will “I” go? Just disappear into the mold he has laid out for me? I don’t think it will come down to that. I think he’ll come around before that happens. I don’t want him to change, I want him to understand. Understand ME. I hope when he does understand he still loves me.”

It’s been 18 years since I wrote that statement. It’s time to accept that he doesn’t and cannot love me.

There’s got to be something else I want to say. My belly is still churning. The anxiety is lessening, but it isn’t gone.

During my conversation with them, they told me “He is being honest with you.” They said this to me before last night’s horrible phone call, after Will and I had talked at the court house and at the house I’m staying in on Saturday.

At the court house and here, I felt that he was being very sincere in his desire to ease my emotional burden. I feel that he means it when he says the boys will stay with me three nights a week. I believe he intends to continue to “do his duty” as a strong financial provider for me during our transition. I even partially believe that he has considered “dating” me again after we get this hard crap sorted through, I think he doesn’t want to have wasted the past 18 years we’ve spent together.

And yet, I don’t completely trust him. I wish I did, but I don’t. I understand that the day the sheriff arrested him and removed him from this stupid house, he stopped trusting me completely, too.

I know that we didn’t trust each other before then, either. We were working on our marriage, but it wasn’t his priority. His priority was the boys (for which I was happy), our marriage, and his career (although I think his career was second, and our marriage a far behind third despite his proclamations to the contrary).

I know neither one of us really KNEW what would become of our marriage. In my mind, I was willing to work through almost anything. And then he put his hands on me again, and I had to do what I said I would do. I had to press charges. I had to get an attorney in case we did permanently separate because I knew nothing of the legal system. And things seemed to fall into place like heavy bricks from that point forward.

I know that in the past week, he has expressed genuine concern for me and to me. Not only at the court house, but also when I told him I was going in for my first mammogram (What? Are you okay? Isn’t it early for you to have mammograms? Does the doctor think something is wrong?) And again when he called on Sunday and I was out of breath. I could tell he was curious, I thought maybe he was concerned.

Friday morning, his father had a medical episode. Will called me and told me and I went running out to his father. Will had already called 911. Everything for his father has worked out all right, so it seems for now anyway, but I know things like this bother Will emotionally. He’s vulnerable when someone he loves is sick or hurt; he was vulnerable last year when his grandfather passed away too, and there was a period of peace between us in the house as he dealt with his grandfather’s passing.

I know that deep down Will must care at least a little for me. I found some peace during the past few days (before last night) in thinking that he and I may actually be able to work through this situation and come out better for it in the end (friends or spouses? don’t really know).

Saturday, when he was out here mowing and fixing my car’s tire, I took him aside and asked him to try to stop talking to me as if we were a couple. We’d had a conversation with his father in which he referred to the land in Texas as “ours” and that “we” … anyway, it was like he used to talk when we were together. And we’re NOT together. We’re separate.

Staying bound to him mentally, emotionally, psychically…it is too hard. When he is vulnerable, my heart wants to hug him, to love him, to soothe him, to make it all better. I feel drawn to him in love and hope when he speaks to me in soft words, when he speaks as if we’re a “we”. When he says, maybe we’ll get back together later, I want to believe him.

And at the court house, we talked about a lot more than the custody, more than the finances. We talked about “us” and what it had been like to be together. We both agree that we hurt each other. He wants me to take responsibility for doing exactly what he did, for being exactly like him. He wants me to stop writing online, wants me to erase all of this from my consciousness.

He’s asking me to erase myself.

Now my gut isn’t churning so much, but the tears are flowing. It’s as if me telling him that I am exactly like him somehow makes the sickness go away. If I am just like him, then I am also abusive. I get the sense that he hopes that I will say I am just exactly like him, and when I do that I won’t want to face my past actions. But that is HIM. If I am just like him, I will change me. If I am just like him, then I don’t want to be this way anymore.

Nope. The knot in my stomach didn’t go away. There’s more to say.

Also on Wednesday, before his attorney advised him not to sign the parenting agreement, we had a lot of time to kill. Somehow, we decided to spend that time together, outside in front of the court house. It wasn’t a conscious decision, and neither of us expected to spend SO LONG talking. But we did, and I left that conversation feeling better.

We talked about the primary parent status. I told him that I wanted shared status. Two more overnights a month would give it to me.

He said that he wasn’t going to give up any legal title until he spoke to his attorney. He said he was paying her to advise him, and he hadn’t had the chance to talk to her about what shared custody (or primary, for that matter) legally meant for him.

Of course, I understood that. We are paying these attorneys money; the least they can do is advise us. I didn’t like it, but I understood it.

He said that he wasn’t going to roll over and accept a secondary parent label just because he had a penis. I also understood that thinking, and I told him I WANT him to see his boys. I didn’t want either of us to bear the primary label.

He said that he didn’t know for sure, but he thought that if he didn’t have a “family” (meaning the primary parent label), then the Army wouldn’t pay him a housing allowance. Just like that, without a family to care for, he thinks he could lose about 25% of his pay. Like him, I don’t know how the housing allowance would be affected if he isn’t the primary parent. But I agree with him that if he were to lose the housing allowance, then he couldn’t afford to take care of “me” in the way he plans.

He began adding up some figures. He added together a $550 rent payment for me (initially he says he’d pay it), the $320 car payment, the $70 per month car insurance payment. He said that because I wanted to design web pages from my home, I would need cable internet and he included cable television in the figures, adding another $150 to the monthly payments. It seems that the final monthly total he came up with was about $1300, but I can’t for the life of me remember what the other $200 was for. Or maybe the total came to $1090/month and I’m imagining the $1300 figure.

He said that IF he kept his housing allowance, then he could afford to pay me more money. But he also reminded me that alimony is based off of his base pay and his housing allowance income isn’t figured into the equation. So in effect, what Will offered to pay me is about twice as much as the state would award. This is based on the assumption that he keeps primary care of the children, and I pay him child support. I feel like he’s trying to buy me out of my boys lives, and I don’t like it.

As grateful as I was to hear that he planned to “take care of me”, I was also wary. There’s got to be a catch. I don’t trust the goodness of his heart when it comes to me, I just don’t. (Last night on the phone, he told me that I could go on thinking “everyone is out to get you” if I wanted to. I told him to hold up – I do not believe that everyone is “out to get me”. I don’t trust HIM. I’ve seen a shift in his wording since our separation. When we were married he used to yell at me for being too trusting, too naive, too out of sync with his real world. Now that we’re separated, he says that I think everyone is out to get me. Weird.)

I told him that I would consider what he’d said, and do some research on my own and with my attorney (if I can ever get an appointment!).

My no-shit main concern about him being the primary parent is that the Army could send him to permanently live at some other post. If that happens, being the primary parent, he would automatically take the boys with him. IF I could get it in legal writing that IF he is moved then the boys stay with me until he is settled (giving me time to find a place near them at their new location), then I could live with him having the primary parent title IF without it he loses his housing allowance.

Up until we separated, he believed he would remain here until he retired. We invited his father to come stay with us, built the garage and the upstairs apartment, because we were certain we wouldn’t have to move from here. But now, he has a new job in a new unit. He swears that he’s not going to be reassigned to any other post. But again, I don’t trust him.

My plan, should EITHER of us have the primary parent title, is to move to wherever he is re-assigned (if that were to happen). If I’m primary, then the boys and I will follow him. If he’s primary, then I will follow them. I plan to keep any financial settlement money I receive in a savings account, just in case I have to move at some point to another state. I’m going to rent, not buy, so I don’t have to sell a house in order to move. I do not want the boys to “lose” their father. I don’t want them to be without him, and I don’t want them to be without me.

I also told Will that we needed to base the financial consent order off of the fact that we would have shared custody. I figured it would save us time in the long run. I told him that I wasn’t signing any financial consent order until AFTER our May 3rd custody mediation appointment. I said that if he wouldn’t agree to shared custody, then I wouldn’t sign the parenting agreement OR the financial consent and I’d let the judge decide our fate.

But I also told him that I would talk to my attorney about the primary parent label and what it means if he keeps it. Would he lose his BAH if he’s not primary? I told him that I would consider everything he said, and that I appreciate his willingness to go above and beyond the alimony payments the state would allow.

At one point, he said, “I told you before that if we ever got to this point and had to fight for the kids that it would be ugly.” And it most certainly is.

Woke up this morning with a knot spinning in my gut. It’s the anxiety that comes from analyzing to death conversations with Will. It comes from thinking and loving, wanting to “fix” and regret.

Last Wednesday, Will and I went to custody mediation. This mediation is a free service provided to divorcing parents; the mediator is not connected to the court proceedings and the goal is to come up with a parenting agreement without attorney or court involvement.

I agreed to him keeping the title of “primary” parent. He agreed to me seeing the boys Thursday nights and every weekend.

I wasn’t happy due to the “primary” parent label and having to check with him for any extra overnights, and he wasn’t happy because without the weekends he could not take the boys camping or four-wheeling or, in reality, have much time with them at all. On his days off, the boys would be with me.

Because neither of us were pleased with the terms of the agreement, we reached a truce and promised to return to mediation in May before our court appearance. At the last second, his attorney advised him not to sign the agreement, and he didn’t. Actually, I was glad.

When he first told excitedly told me that his attorney advised him not to sign, I was scared and crushed. Having three overnights a week was “guaranteed” in the agreement. It set precedence for future visitation should the judge eventually be forced to decide. But the agreement also set the precedence of me agreeing to his primary parent status. But Will was excited for good reasons.

He said:

• His attorney told him that the judge had set only the MINIMUM visitation. He could “allow” me to see the boys Thursday night or any night I requested if he wanted. And he planned to allow the boys three nights with me per week despite what the judge ordered previously. He said that if I didn’t believe him, then I could consider the fact that he wouldn’t lie to his boys. He’d already told them his plan, and he wouldn’t go back on it for their sakes.
• But if he signed the agreement and I decided to NOT return to mediation, then changing this parenting agreement required a TRIAL, not a court appearance. He was adamant about seeing the boys on the weekends; he didn’t want to be the weekday parent.

I considered his point of view. I told him that I know he believes I “crawfished” on him initially, and although I didn’t agree with his assessment I was willing to understand his fear and willing to trust that he wouldn’t crawfish on a promise to his boys.

We left without signing a thing, but still he allowed the boys to stay overnight with me Wednesday through Saturday last week.

I allowed him time out at our house to tend to the lawn and work with the boys on Saturday. Will also fixed and repaired a hole in my car’s tire. He spent a lot of time at the house on Saturday, and nothing ugly between us happened at all.

If Will wanted to, he could say that the fact that I hear voices was a clear indication that I was insane. Maybe he could find a whole slew of people and professionals to agree with him, but I’ll take my chances.

I want to share with you a journal entry from this past Sunday, April 18, 2010. Our boys were honored with pall bearer duties by our neighbor who’s uncle passed away. They were gone for most of Sunday, and while they were gone I took the opportunity to pray.

This house I stay in is so HEAVY. It’s laden with hurtful memories; it’s wall bears the scar of the dresser forced into it on January 22nd. Sometimes when I try to work I feel as if I’m suffocating under the weight of it all. There is peace here now that wasn’t here before, but the peace is uneasy – as if at any second the walls could fall in on me.

Nevertheless, the judge temporarily “gave” me the house. I’m stuck here until Will and I sign a mutually agreeable consent order OR the judge “takes it away”.

I grabbed up a bunch of sage to smolder as I went from room to room praying that God take the heaviness and the hurt away, to let me know that I wasn’t alone. I was crying as I did this, and in the middle of my crying and praying and smudging, Will called. He asked if I’d been running and if I was all right. He sounded concerned, but I told him that I was all right (which I was) and not to worry.

Not a minute later, after I’d begun praying again, Eddie called to check in with me.

I took these calls as signs that I was definately NOT alone! But I was confused. Why had Will called at just that time? Why had Eddie followed on his heels? I sat down to write in my journal about these “signs”.

I received an answer. This is how it went, and yes, this is how I talk to god sometimes and yes, sometimes songs start the conversations:

Me: God, Signs, signs, everywhere are signs. I ask to know I’m not alone and Will calls. Then Eddie calls. WTF does that mean? You KNOW God that if I could get my family back WHOLE and INTACT, Healthy and Better than before – so much better because we two adults were doing what we needed to do to get our family back…YOU KNOW I WANT THAT!

I don’t trust him, but he calls during a sage-cleansing, a PRAYER?! Is that YOU or is it me calling to him psychically or emotionally or what? Was that YOU?

Them:

Yes.

Me: What am I supposed to know? What am I supposed to get from that sign?

Them:

That you are never alone. That he is being honest with you. That not one of us know how this will end.

Me: WHY? Why can’t you DO SOMETHING? Why can’t you MAKE HIM WAKE UP?! WHY?

Them:

There is a pulling time, Kellie. It is a pulling time. We are dragging you forward and you want to stay in dysfunctional familiarty. You do want him back, you do…but you think you must resign yourself to the old ways for it to happen.

Truth be told, the only way he can come back is if things are new. We are working on him. And you. But if you won’t MOVE then no change can occur.

You are doing well. Your anxiety passes. You have a plan. You have goals. You will succeed. Your boys will succeed. You must concentrate on letting go of fear and doubt. Embrace love and confidence. Embrace YOU.

You weren’t anything then that you are not now – but now you are greater than. Greater than you.

You are greater than. You can overcome. You can move without fear. You can You can You can.

There is a house you can physically move to. Picture it. Your own house. No bad stuff there. Nothing hurtful surrounding you. You need it, Kellie.

Me: Okay.

Them:

You need to MOVE physically and psychically from here. Return? No one knows. But you must fill your space. THIS house is not HIS or YOURS ALONE. It was OURS and like you told him, there is no “ours” there is no “we.”

You and he must see you’re individuals.

Must see.

Then, no matter what happens, you will both know. You will both know. And Kellie, right now, you alone are stronger than we. You alone are stronger than he.

Quiet hero, Kellie. You will rise from these ashes and burn brighter than you can imagine right now. You are a beacon. You are the light. You Are.

Me again, with the audacity not to listen but only to demand an answer about my angel: Where is Pauline? Where are her footsteps?

Them:

She is marching with you.

Tonight, a conversation occurred that I knew would come but hoped would not. Will was angry after reading the past few days’ blog entries. He feels that he is doing everything he can to provide for me, and yet I continue to drag his name through the mud.

He says that he believes that I believe what I write is the truth, but says I do not tell the whole story. He insists that I have never mentioned throwing keys at him, or to saying mean things to him. He says that he has done nothing I haven’t done, that we are both equally wrong.

He says that I am slandering him. Dictionary.com defines slander as “a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report  (i.e. a slander against his good name).” So I am lying, he says.

He told me that I had better write something good about him. He has an appointment with his attorney on Wednesday and they are going to initiate the financial consent order. If I want him to be reasonable, then I’d better write something good. When I asked if he was threatening me, he said he was “promising” me.

The really sad thing about his promise is that in the past 24 hours I have spoken to two family members about the things I truly love about Will. But I hadn’t had time to blog (weird, isn’t it, for a woman who “isn’t doing shit” to not have time to blog).

Last night, I told my mother that he protected me from other men (who, after the date rape, were the enemy). That he was once intrigued by the ways we differed. I was an artist, a free spirit, and although he didn’t understand me, I offered something to him that he must have needed. He loved me. He wanted to provide a home, a family, and financial security to me and our children, and he has done those things admirably.

Never once have I worried that my family would have no income, or that he would refuse to have or keep a job. In fact, there were times he carried the burden of two jobs on his shoulders while I remained at home, safe and sound, with our young boys.

Will re-entered the military in small part because there was no real future in the company he worked for due to buy outs and the resulting seniority issues, but also because he believed that the military could offer more family time. It may sound silly to assume the military would offer more family time, but at that time, he was working second shift with no change in sight and NEVER got to spend much time with his boys. The military offered a 9-5 job, home on the weekends; he couldn’t have anticipated the number of times he’s been ordered to deploy or the length of time he would be gone.

This morning, I spoke to my grandmother. I told her that Will was now the father I know he always wanted to be. Since his return from deployment in December, his children are his priority…not work, not his “schedule”, not his other commitments to friends/acquaintances. He is enjoying time with his boys – real and memorable time.

They work together, they joke together. I know his relationship with them is different from my relationship with them, but I sense a closeness between them that wasn’t there before. Marc and Eddie were excited to see their dad on Sunday night; I was happy for it, happy for them – all three of them.

But yet, this post, the one that most likely would have come naturally from me, is bittersweet. I so wish I hadn’t talked to him tonight; if I hadn’t spoken to him then this post would have been better. It would have been “good”. It wouldn’t have included the introductory part about his “promise” to me.

A facebook friend posted this quote: “Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.”

Good advice. But I think my wishbone is coming back. Or maybe it just never left.

I think I am foolish for wishing what I wish. My wish is the same as the day I started this blog: I want the four of us to be a happy, healthy family. I don’t want a divorce, I don’t want to divide my family. Our precious boys deserve so much better than this.

The problem is that I hate myself for wishing what I wish.

I have this idea that somehow, after almost three months, I should be more solid in my resolve to just “end it”. I remember writing somewhere that the HOPE was what was killing me. Unfortunately, I still hope.

On the flip side, I have some ideas about what happened in court last week. I’m not going to share them here because, well, they’re my ideas and I’m going to consider them alone.

I’ve told Will that I’ll work through a financial consent order with him. But I’m not signing it until after we go through custody mediation on the third of May. I want shared custody at least, and if he won’t agree to it, then I’ll put everything on the line for the judge to decide. Finances, custody…everything.

Yes, I know the judge decided in his favor last time. Yes, I know it could happen again. Will doesn’t want to go back to court because of the hurtful things my attorney says on my behalf. Of course he’s hurt now in public – when I told him similar things in private, he didn’t care. It’s the public persona vs. private persona thing.

The things his attorney says piss me off – they do. I’m hopping mad over some of the stuff his attorney has said. But I’m not embarrassed. Why? Because it isn’t true; I know the truth in my heart, and what I hear in court isn’t true. I’m trying very hard to leave it in the court room. What goes on in there is like a 30 second snapshot of an 18 year marriage in which NO ONE looks good. Well, maybe. I don’t know what picture the judge is looking at.

Well, I am embarassed to tell people that the judge gave temporary primary custody to Will. THAT is humiliating beyond words. I cannot tell you how embarassed I am to inform people of the judge’s decision. But that judge’s decision was HIS DECISION. He made it, not me. A judge made the decision, not God.

I know I’ve been the best mother I know how to be. I know I don’t deserve to be sidelined in my children’s lives. I am praying and listening even though God’s voice is muted under the weight of worry and sadness I carry in my heart.

All I can do is keep moving forward. But I’m not going to sign documents with which I do not agree, and I’m not signing anything until Will agrees to shared custody. To me, shared custody means that we both live under the same set of rules. I don’t have to ask him for extra time with our children and he doesn’t have to ask me.  (We will, at times, request extra time for special reasons I’m sure.)

I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you how ASKING HIM for anything in relation to the boys contributes to his ability to maintain control. If Will doesn’t agree to shared custody, then nothing will be signed and the judge can choose what is to become of us.

I’ve got nothing to lose. The boys are my boys no matter how much time I have to see them. No judge can “take them away” from me, not really. And in about five years, the judge’s decision won’t matter anyway.

I am SO HAPPY to have my boys with me right now. Will is “primary” parent right now, but he allowed me to bring the boys home with me last night and they will stay with me through Sunday. Will swears we’ll do the same cycle over again until we get back into court on May 11th, at least.

Will isn’t happy with the judge’s arrangement either. He gets no weekends under the new temporary order. And he’s not back in the house yet, but seeing that I don’t WANT to stay here, he’ll be back in it soon. The judge already let it be known that the “primary” parent doesn’t necessarily “get” the house, too.

I was wrong in my prior post – the fat lady hasn’t sung YET.

However, while she’s warming up for her final number, I’ll try to not worry about the courts and simply be grateful that my boys are with me as much as they are. It simply cannot stand this way. I have hope and I have fight left in me to see this thing through to the end. And if Will turns out to be manipulating me with his statements about maybe dating me again after all this bullshit is over, I won’t be surprised. I’m not going to let his generous actions concerning visitations and soothing words concerning “our” future woo me away from what is right and just – in my mind.

If he isn’t willing to negotiate fairly with me, I’ll throw myself on the mercy of the court. I’m not giving in on the things I believe in. Namely, the boys need their mother in their lives, and I deserve at LEAST half of the month’s days/overnights with them. Shared custody at the very least. (BTW, I did not lose any “legal” custody of my children; joint legal custody remains in place. What changed was physical custody.)

I have not had the opportunity to speak with the judge. When my attorney requested affidavits attesting to my mothering, I did not write one in my own behalf. I thought it would be silly to write an affidavit for myself; I thought it look like I was attempting to go “behind the scenes” and sway the judge. My attorney didn’t tell me to write one for myself, so I didn’t. I preferred to have those who know me attest to my abilities. Will did write one for himself, but I didn’t read it.

I started reading Will’s father’s affidavit, but when I got to a point in which his dad said something about me that, at the time it happened, never ever left his lips, I quit reading. I am not going to subject myself to any more lies about who I am as interpreted by people who love Will.

[sigh] Unless my attorney requires me to read them.

At the beginning of this post, I related that I was happy the boys are with me, and I am. The delicate “peace” could be taken out from under me tonight, if Will wanted, seeing that he gets to make the call on visitations. So, my happiness is genuine, but so is the unease and distrust in their father. I am able to “be” happy with them despite the undercurrents of doubt running through my heart. My only comfort is that Will told the boys the plan; if he breaks it, then he breaks their hearts.

If nothing else, this experience is teaching me to take NO ONE for granted. I’ve been the primary caregiver of my babies since the day each of them were born. It’s what I do above all other callings. And now I am faced with custody issues that I cannot understand, threatened with having my precious time with them cut short.

I will never ever look at “me time” or any activity that diverts my attention from the faces of my boys EVER again without KNOWING that the diversion is robbing me of precious time with my boys. If I have to sit right beside them watching their programming, watching their game play, watching them watch the cats, or whatever it is they’re doing…I will do so with interest. I will be more available than ever before. NOTHING takes priority over being with my children during every possible moment that they are with me.

I took them for granted in a lot of ways. The comfort of being their mother day in and day out allowed me to believe I would always be with them. I’ll NEVER take them for granted again.