Days 0706, 0707 & 0708

I feel like I have a very large, heavy breathing rottweiler attached to my head, his jaws clamped tightly over my brain to just above my eyes.

If people could see him there my stiff expressions, hesitant decision making, and inability to think more than an hour or two into the future would become more understandable. The wallet left on the bench at home instead of taken with me to the doctor’s appointment, the odd, unmatched socks, the forgetting of friends’ birthdays and meetings …

If the Drooling Rottweiler of Anxiety was visible, the fact that I am dressed properly and standing upright would be seen for the superheroic effort it feels like at the moment.

In three weeks it will all be over. The court process will have hit its end point. I will have survived listening to He Who Shall Not Be Named pleading his case, telling me (and the court) how much he loves his son, how he has attended a yoga class and therefore is not stressed any more.

And I will have to decide I can live with whatever the decision is.

That I can either welcome my son’s engagement with his dad on a cautious and incremental basis or that I will have to face the reality of even more heavily arming my little guy to defend himself from the self-crushing reality of life with his father.

Days 0689, 0690 & 0691

No matter what that man does to me he cannot change the fact that I stood up one day more than four years ago and said: No more.

That is where I go to when he fiddles with kid’s heart, when he twists my brain up with his spiraling, intricate and irrational ‘logic’.

Where once upon a time I sat in a witness box and got asked: And what were you wearing?

Now I am going to sit in a witness box and get accused of giving that man a hard time. Just for fun. For the four years of fun that has seen me tear away at the web he’d wrapped me in.

Because ha ha to him; it’s turned out to be a chrysalis and I can’t wait to see all of me emerge after that final exertion.

Day 0576

How do I describe the feeling of just plain having had enough?

A bit empty? Devoid of anger? Beyond anger?

A friend told me the other day of how she had split from her husband the day before and she had found herself wandering through the house, collecting photos of him and dropping them onto the driveway below so they could all smash in a pile.

She wasn’t angry. Not at all. She had that feeling — the one that says to your whole body: I am finished with this.

It’s the feeling I had when, after two+ years of trying so hard to fix things and support him and protect myself and my child, it was one fairly simple act of his that left me hollow. Done. Finished.

Not angry. And not numb, though you might expect that. Just plain finished.

I feel like that today. Not angry. Not anything really other than tired. Not a feeling intense enough to be passionate. A completion of something.

Nothing big has happened. It’s simply the fourth Christmas of being hounded and yelled at (although that now comes via lawyer’s letters but it is still his words and ‘logic’ that they hurl at me). Of having my son involved in things that aren’t his worry but make him wonder if I’m the person he knows I am. Things that make him feel disloyal to his dad if he doesn’t give me a hard time. And he is nine.

Maybe I have reached that point where I have nothing left to hollow out of me. The point where he can’t tie in me in such knots any more. Because it’s gone. Totally gone. That sense of care I once had for what he does. That concern for how he acts towards me.

Maybe this is the point where I know I’m out?

I have most certainly grown utterly, unambiguously, weary.

Days 0568 & 0569

Just because it’s written down, doesn’t make it true.
Just because it’s written down by a lawyer, doesn’t make it true.
Just because he knows every button of mine, built most of my tender spots with his own hands and has no sense of anyone else’s needs, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to read the words ‘blatant disregard’ in reference to my performance as a parent.
In fact, it is how he has the balls to write that black is white and white is black that almost makes me wonder: is he right? Is it true?
One of life’s little (black) magic tricks.

Days 0520 & 0521

One day all this custody and court stuff will be over, won’t it?
And that day won’t be when my son turns 18, will it?
We must be nearing the end.
Every once in a while I get a whiff of what it will be like when I don’t have the buffer of a lawyer between me and him. How he constantly, insidiously tries to make me feel like I’m doing him wrong. How he uses me as a babysitter disguised as generosity.
I need to grow whatever thickness of skin, whatever Impermeability cloak it will take to deal with his manipulations for the next ten years or so.
I am frightened I’ll fall back into old patterns, that I’ll forget I’m allowed to say no and to be live, even know, that I’m not selfish and thoughtless. And stupid.
How will I go out into the big bad world all on my own?

Day 0416

Yes, I do believe that one does ‘the right thing’ because it is the right thing and for no other reason.
And, yes, I do try really really excruciatingly hard to do the right thing as much as I can.
But there are times, my friends, when I so want just a huge screaming heap of recognition for at least the trying if not the achieving.
I have an Ego after all. And sometimes internal rewards don’t feel like enough encouragement to keep me going.
Like today, for instance.
When I get a missive from He Who Shall Not Be Named via his adjunct, telling me that it is really time that I moved on using himself as an example of someone who has moved on.
The complete subversion of reality in that sentence is enough to turn me inside out like a doggie poo bag with owner’s hand inserted and just about to pick up the steaming turd.
I mean, when the fence tells the cow to stop getting in its way you have to wonder if the sun will in fact set in the east this evening.
The most frustrating thing about court and the law in this situation is that it appears you can say whatever you like, we all know it isn’t true, but you can say it. And we will respond politely and let the outcome speak for the truth (I hope). But that act of subverting the scream that comes up one’s throat on being faced with total, utter nonsense is enough to kill a person. Or at least kill their soul and make them wish for recognition of their heartfelt attempts to do the Right Bloody Thing.
Argh.

Day 0373

It makes me angry when people – and the media – try to paint every innocent person’s death as that of someone who was more than a human being. For one thing, it’s a disservice to the amazing ness of ordinary human beings. I mean, I think when a soldier does something brave, that it’s more of a compliment to describe them in imperfect, human terms than to make it sound like they were or are superhuman and perfect. It’s the things we sometimes do in spite of our frailties that make some of us heroes.
It is the same but opposing disservice done when we or the media frame humans who perpetrate horrid crimes as monsters and wild eyed, unfamiliar crazies. The scary part really is just how human they are; the underlying warning that we can all end up there if not for strength of character, support, social services and a culture of decency.
I spent a year expecting the guy who assaulted me to be a literal monster. I thought when I saw him in court I would see the evil in him, through his blood dripping fangs, his little red eyes, his horns, tail and pitchfork. But no, he was just a guy. And not an impressive one. Though certainly sturdy enough that my dad’s reaction was to clap me on the back and tell me how impressed he was that I’d fought the guy off. Seeing this man first made me feel more calm: there are no monsters. But then it made me realise: anyone can be a monster. There are no telltale signs.
What makes that realisation one I can live with is its opposite: that we all can be heroes, and you never know until you meet one for yourself how many you have around you.

Day 0312

Even if I do say so myself, I have an amazing capacity to ignore difficult things that are coming towards me.
I don’t mean I’m able to get out of their way but that I can pretend to myself they aren’t coming until just after they happen.
I know it takes a lot of brain energy to do this. And I become more disorganized and scattered when I’m in this situation.
But this time I am sucking at it.
I have to return to the grinding court process this month and as soon as March turned to April, my brain went from a happy break from it all to full on anxiety at this thing which is still two weeks away.
Even when I think I’m relaxed my body is still tense. In particular I seem to subconsciously tense my butt all day. Which makes for back pain but not Buns of Steel. And that just seems unfair.
I have this vision of myself so inwardly tense that at some point I crush myself completely into a small, hard ball of matter about the size of a gobstopper.
If only I could live with that day just being over and dint have a need also to see it go well.

Day 0247

I sat in a witness box once when I was 19. It was a harrowing experience. I had to sit across from a man whose face was unfamiliar but who managed to radically alter my life and my outlook, to undermine everything I had believed to be true up to that point with an act that lasted less than five minutes.
What he did was monstrous. But there sitting in front of me was a dude you would see down at the pub or not even notice walking down the street.
The only good thing he did for me was make me vastly more aware of and grateful for the good I find in people.
I remember sitting there being asked what I was wearing at the time I ‘met’ this man (a grey-blue, I’ll fitting polyester overall type dress that was my uniform working as a checkout chick at a chemist in the mall – super sexy stuff). It was my lawyer asking so the other one wouldn’t: and I so resented having to answer.
Sometimes it is only the big picture that should matter for justice: not the small details.
A man attacked a woman he didn’t know in a lift. That is wrong. Does anything else matter?
A man terrorized his wife for 10 years. Does anything else matter?
Yes, we are all hurt and broken and warped by our parents, but when it comes to acts against each other, while we should all be forgiven in the end, do the little details bear assessment?

Day 0213

A year ago.

I was frightened and falling in love with a gentle soul. It was a difficult situation but he was treating me with respect – and that makes most hard things easier.
I was still floating from having spent a whole day with him, next to his skin. I was about to find a thoughtful gift from him, jogged through the evening to my mailbox.
I had a wonderfully close friend who knew how to speak to me, who shared my staring at the ceiling problem, and who made me laugh for real.
I had yet to step into a court and find out my ex preferred to oppose than to actually achieve.
I had a pretty crap job.
I spent Christmas afternoon and evening totally on my own, in the bush, tracking down a waterfall that had no water.
I was hopeful.

And now.
I have a better crap job.
I have a half dozen friend invitations for Christmas.
I discovered that wonderfully close friend wasn’t real.
My heart fell apart and has yet to knit itself together again.
I discovered I was treated with the opposite of respect by the one I was falling in love with.
I have spent too many days in court and too many hours. And nothing has been achieved.
I feel hollow. And worn out. And angry. And hurt.
And yet somehow I am still hopeful.

Or maybe I’m just saying that because I have to be?