I got the results back from the scantron test my counselor gave me a couple weeks ago. I have been avoiding writing about it. It has just been spinning in my brain, keeping all the other stuff from flowing out. I wanted to write about the end of baseball season. I wanted to write about train trips. I wanted to write about phone messages. I wanted to avoid the obvious, that I could not write about anything else until the feelings about the scantron test were out. Damn.
On a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper there is a graph. It is really more of a line, with dots, on a a scale, with little letters by it representing things. Things like Self Esteem and Anger. There is a truthfulness scale, a depression scale, and a masculine/feminine scale. It has a way of detecting if you are being too fakey-good, or too fakey-bad.
I told the truth, did not exaggerate my goodness, took responsibility for my badness, and answered appropriately for my gender identity. I am not a hypochondriac, a loner, or in any kind of denial. It told me I am angry and depressed, have low self esteem, and tend to need validation from others. It says I have a tendency towards substance abuse (including food) and might be suicidal. Except for the suicidal part (I am not so don't worry), tell me something I didn't know. Most of it fell in the "yeah, duh" category.
The depression diagnosis did not surprise me. It is, in fact, the reason I started counseling to begin with. I knew it. I had gained weight (not a good thing in the best of circumstances). Food tasted bland. My favorite movie irritated me. That was early January, and I had no energy, seasonal blues that meant my Christmas tree was still up, but I hadn't finished decorating it yet. My favorite person had moved away, and I didn't like even the smell of coffee anymore (and I love coffee). I wasn't talking to my best friend, for whatever circumstances were causing the courses of our respective lives to never coincide.
I had also just contacted my attorney about wanting to clarify an agreement regarding custody and visitation. All in all, things were going smoothly. We had survived the Winter school break with no major issues, my children's father picking the kids up for visitation at the appointed/ordered times and places, and not whining too much.
So the only thing I wanted was to have my kids on their brother Seth's birthday every year, as if it was a Holiday (and honestly, this did not effect the schedule AT ALL until 2015). I thought it was no big deal since it was in the original negotiations and co-parenting discussions, and had inadvertently been left off the final orders. This is how my attorney had phrased it to his attorney "Lastly, and this is something you and I touched on very briefly long ago, Elise wishes to have the children with her each year on the birthday of the parties' other son, Seth, who passed away. His birthday was Feb 8."
What I got back in an email was this: "RE: our first "child" Seth. He was stillborn before even being a viable person. This was before Mariah and Haysten were born. I don't agree with her request."
Those 27 words wrecked me. Seth and Mariah and Haysten's father was the only other person in the world who knew Seth lived. And in 27 words he dismissed him. He was a so-called "child" only in my eyes. In my eyes the three of them are a package, the three children I carried, the three children I gave birth to, the three children I love with every fiber of my being. Their father, it seems, only had two children.
So what does this have to do with my scantron? Well, I am pissed and sad. DUH! And 27 words sent a whole flood of other things into my reality. My own childhood. The balance between letting go of hurtful things and still allowing myself to retain the good things. The acceptance that the man I loved and created children with was abusive and cruel, and still is. 27 words that cost him nothing, and has been a catalyst for coming to terms with my entire life.
I am actually a bit surprised that I wasn't worse off. Maybe I can write about something else now. Not like I actually wrote about the scantron test anyway.
