How do I

Stop loving the person you seemed to be

Before you disappeared and became the person you are?

 

Days 0872, 0873, 0874, 0875 & 0876

If I hadn’t decided to put my son’s happiness and equilibrium before mine.

If I hadn’t decided it’s not my place to choose whether or not he loves his dad.

If I hadn’t had the good fortune to have a resilient and generous hearted son.

If I had decided to take on the easy role of angry bitch who wasted 11 years of her life …

If all of these things then I could have kept my son away from his dad completely. I could have made the court case black and white.

I could have reduced myself and my ex-Arsehat to wooden characters in a bad episode of Degrassi.

I could have broken my son’s heart with stories of how his dad is a monster.

But I didn’t.

I chose to admit the nuance. To insist on the dimensions. To not make decisions for my son about who he should love.

And the result is five long years of tiredness. A court and judge who understood in the end.

And some bloody fracking psychologist who never had time to look for anything but bruises and conclude that all is ok if your skin is clear.

A psych who finds us not interesting enough and my son too well adjusted to take the time to see that I am not a two-bit, badly written character who puts fighting with their ex above their son’s wellbeing.

It’s one sentence in a letter to a GP. But I don’t deserve to be patronized like that.

I worked so flipping hard to be true to myself and my son and what I know is right …

Does it bother me so much because I’m just plain tired out? Or have I learned to be angered when I’m treated as less than I know I am?

Or is it just annoying not to have my efforts recognized?

I’ve asked myself so many times, what is the point of doing the right thing if there is no recognition for it? And I know, I know, the answer is because it’s the right thing.

But still. 

Days 0868, 0869, 0870 & 0871

It took me a very long frog in a frying pan process to identify what was wrong with my relationship as abuse.

And the realisations came in fits and starts, in concert with his worst behavior.

In part it was denial and my sunny disposition. In other parts it was because he could go from beelzebub to charming in less than the blink of an eye.

But mostly it was because he ‘loved’ me and I know I’m imperfect. 

In court his side’s narrative had the abuse all happening after the trauma of my son’s birth. And it was traumatic. But really the trauma is what kept me there inert well after I should have left. The trauma wasn’t what made the abuse happen.

Having my son’s big blue eyes and spongelike learning in our house made me start standing up for myself.

Just as a reflection shows you what you look like in front of the mirror, I could suddenly see how I was being treated in the eyes of a witness to it. Even before he started to talk and reveal truths to me.

I had been treated that way for half a decade before my son came along. 

Having him around just gave me insight and a reason to stand up for myself (and him) that heightened conflict.

Before then, before I had a witness, I had learned to protect myself by not arguing my case. Outward conflict was lower, but I was less than human: shut down and corralled in a relationship where he was always dominant.

Days 0864, 0865, 0866 & 0867

I’m not a huge fan of insults – unless they’re funny. But the worst kinds of insults – much like lies – are the lazy ones.

You know, the ones where zero effort has been applied and all that’s left is the nasty.

Things like: ‘She manages like she’s a police officer’ when the person in question used to be a police officer.

It’s the same aggravation with ‘the easy narrative’.

Just say you had spent five years being strung through court over child custody matters with a man who once and continues to try to abuse you.

Just say he spends all that time telling you you’re a liar. And mental. And completely forensic in trying to keep his child from him.

And the narrative he chooses to tell the tea room audience at work is this: The system is full of man haters. She is just keeping my son from me to cause me pain. She is a vengeful and crazed bitch.

Never mind that he’s the one who took the matter to court. Never mind that he ended up getting less than he’d been offered custody wise the first day he and his estranged wife sat down for free of charge mediation five years and a couple hundred thousand dollars ago.

And ‘Man Hating Crazed Bitch’ is all he can come up with?

Surely if I’m that crazed, I’m worth a much better story than that?

How insulting.

Days 0859, 0860, 0861, 0862 & 0863

Oh dear. Just 107 days from the 1000 I gave myself back in 2013 and I’d still prefer to change the plans of three other people just to avoid sharing a crowded pub forecourt with Halfman and his wife.

863 days later and I’m still finding out sleazy stories about him that make me wonder how my sleazeometer didn’t kick in at all.

I know hormones and loneliness and escaping a brutal 15-years … yada yada. But still, how could I not see it?

Those lines he fed me … Even when I objectively knew I was being treated to his best ‘sleep with me’ repertoire … I still let it work on me. Some of it was me thinking ‘this is an adventure even if ill-advised but some of me wanted to be charmed and let it happen.

When I think back to the two bits of conversation that led to our first kiss. Well, it’s embarrassing to give them oxygen.

But it feels good to dig them out and mock them as well. And maybe they will float away once they’re out there.

The first is such a huge sociopath warning sign: he told me his wife had rung him at work the previous week and ‘she was so painful’ – that was his code for her wanting something from him (like support and feelings). Anyway, she was upset and not liking herself and asked him: ‘why do you love me?’

Which is just so sad to me – it breaks my heart that she had to call him to ask.

And his response recounted to me was: ‘And I thought, I don’t know why but I need to get through this conversation. So I googled ‘why do I love her?’ And got this list of 101 reasons. Things like ‘because you support me’ and ‘you make me feel like I matter’.

And that is when he turned to me and said: And I thought these are all the things You do for me, not her. This is the way you make me feel.

Pretty good line, really. If I was 12.

I had a twinge: What a horrid thing to do to your wife – to mock her cry for help like that.

And then I thought: I’ve only ever just been respectful and kind to Halfman. Funny that he interprets that as something else.

And then the twinge passed. And not long after he was bemoaning his marriage and scooping me into his arms for a kiss under the freezing moonlight.

It is humiliating to think of how sophomoric it sounds now. How revealing of his lack of respect or feeling for others. And yet I let myself fall for it at some level.

Ugh.

Days 0854, 0855, 0856, 0857 & 0858

I consider that the evidence indicates that the father has behaved in a way to control the mother and has used emotional abuse to dominate her. There was frequent verbal abuse. At times, there was physical abuse, to the extent of the mother being bruised on one occasion.

Days 0849, 0850, 0851, 0852 & 0853

When I was a little person – golden haired and butterball turkey-shaped – and got sick with the flu or something equally yucky, my dad was a glorious nurse. My mum spent more time at home with me when I was sick, but dad’s shifts were more memorable. Tender and gentle and thoughtful. Of course I had to be on death’s door for either of them to confirm I was actually sick, but still. He took awfully good care of me. And still does.

My One True Love didn’t. At all. I once sliced open my face between my upper lip and my nostril when a speaker fell on me from a height. His response was to say he was too busy to get me to Emergency safely so could I just cover it up and lie over there. Because the blood bothered him. Yes. Yes. I married him after that. Yes. Yes. Perhaps it was a slight warning sign.

Anyway, that incident pretty much encapsulated his Care Program: just go over there so I can forget about you while you’re icky, thanks.

And of course Capt Arsehat. His idea of care was more of a ‘whydontyou’. As in: Your sickness is ruining my weekend. You are just being melodramatic throwing up and spewing diahorrea at the same time! Why can’t you ever be there for me? Why don’t you care more about me!? Fuck you! 

And so on. Delivered in all caps, of course, but you don’t deserve that, dear reader.

Is it any wonder I am used to taking care of myself when I’m sick? 

And yet, I hate that so much.

The gentleness of being cared for. I felt it in friend form this weekend. And it was beautiful.

I don’t know what kind of person I want to fall in love with. Not even sure I want to fall in love. Ever. But kindness, that is the Ultimate. That is what I want in my life. 

Days 0845, 0846, 0847 & 0848

Grrrr.

Having your looks commented on in a work context.

Ugh.

And then the implication that if you raise these comments as inappropriate and/or demeaning, you are just a bitch who needs some time with a male to relax.

Ugh. Ugh.

I’ve had a number of men (usually over the age of 50) comment to me on how difficult it is for them to function in a professional world where they’re no longer able to compliment a female on her looks or the length of her skirt without being unjustly slapped with the label of ‘sexist’.

Gee. It really must be hard keeping those irrelevant thoughts to yourself.

So painful to have to ogle women as if they are ‘other’ rather than just look upon them as a brain and fellow contributor to a conversation.

Closely related to this hellish part of male existence is their ability to mistake ‘being polite’ for ‘flirtation’.

Seriously now, a female smiling and saying ‘hello’ at a work meeting or waggling their wit in front of you must just be their way of saying ‘take me now – I only work so I can meet eligible middle aged be-gutted, balding men like you’.

I’d say ‘BITE ME’ to the lot of them, but I’m pretty sure that would be misconstrued.

Days 0843 &0844

oh my. If I could I would lead all the Mean Girls out of town and off a cliff.

Mean Girls are so, well, mean. But they are also just to bloody nasty. And good at choosing targets that are soft and will hurt as their barbs catch their Good Person skin.

I thought my days of hearing girls bitching about people behind their backs were pretty much over in high school.

But oh, I am still so young and naive.

And I have that fatal desire to fix it all and stand up to them that doesn’t really work ever and is also exhausting.

Maybe there will be a day that I wake up and look at the world from a perspective that starts with general disappointment rather than general respectful admiration.

At least then the fall in expectations would be less far each day.

Days 0839, 0840, 0841 & 0842

I’ve come so far and yet …

A Halfman sighting is enough to make me search for the puke bag.

Will that sense of sickening, internalised anger ever go away?