Prophet

 I am currently in possession of the world's worst snow globe. Yes, there is a story.

There is nothing vulgar about it, or even trashy.  It does not have drug paraphernalia or any kind of sexual reference as the snow glitter.  As a matter of fact, it would probably be just meh to most people, if they noticed it at all. But to me, it is now, and always has been, the most hilarious snow globe ever.  

It is a Jesus.  The base of the globe is the upper half of the body, with arms and a staff. Inside the globe is the head.  Yes, the Jesus head IS the snow globe.  It is like a Jesus in an astronaut suit, or in a scuba diving helmet. All rosy pink cheeks and plastic combed beard. It is the perfect fake Jesus, with the perfect fake glitter snow floating in the perfect glycerin water.

Until I saw a picture of it this year.

See, the globe was a gift my son gave at the last minute to the woman my children's father is married to, Christmas about 10 years ago.  It was legit the most perfect, and also the least thought given to any gift ever in the history of gift giving.  My children, not raised with any particular faith, only know the superficial meaning of Jesus as relayed to them via their stepmother's sketch relationship with the Christian faith.  

So I have laughed at this thing for the last decade or so, always pretty indignantly, but still with the full on Catholic mentality that I was raised in rearing its ugly head. How anyone could make, much less buy, then be gifted to cherish a resin and water Jesus-in-a-glass-bubble was beyond me, and so completely ridiculous, I had to laugh or I would have cried.

This year, about November, when the decorations start coming out (because this only comes out at Christmas apparently) my daughter showed me (via a text photo) that half the water in the globe was now gone, and what was left was now a disgusting rust and gray color, and that the Jesus now looked like it was drowning in a kind of flooded puddle , but only a little worse because the head out of the water did not have the benefit of the liquid magnification, and it looked cut in half and kind of dismembered from the rest of the swollen bottom part of the face.

This would not do.  Even as I laughed at the sadness of the situation, the idea of my favorite terrible gift being in such bad shape got to me. And like any good ex-wife would do, I asked my son to steal it so that I could repair it, and he could give it back in a second round of holiday giving on the tenth anniversary of the horrible occurrence.

No good deed goes unpunished, or something like that, because here it is almost March, and the globe has now been repaired.  Granted, it was a truly fuck my life kinda saga, with a crack in the original (possibly the cause of the gross water to begin with) and two other globes being acquired and broken before the one the head is now submerged in finally became a reality.  There was glycerin to buy, snow to replace, appropriate glue to spread, and a new rustic fabric scarf to create to cover up the slight ridge on this fourth globe that is just slightly too big for the body base. But, at least not broken or disgusting anymore.

And so it is done.

But, oh, there is more. (There is always more.)

Even with all the slightly annoying work this globe has cost me, I don't actually care if she gets it back at this point.  See, a bit over three weeks ago, she was arrested for domestic violence against my ex. I have been told she pushed him down some stairs, and attacked him.  Apparently this was not the first time, just the first time my son was there, and pulled her off his dad, and the police subsequently became involved.  My 18 year old had to protect his dad, which I understand, but at 18, the possibility of him being arrested instead of her has not escaped all the spin my brain could do when I found out. Me now fixing something that belongs to her, that was a gift from my son, some how feels gross, and emotions closer to disgust rather than humor. Everything I had believed about her, and her fake piety and perfection just whipped around and left my ex's and my (albeit adult) children vulnerable and justice involved.  I feel sorta powerless and sad, and a now pathetic but fixed snow globe is too trivial and yet importantly poignant at the same time.

I will hand the globe to my son at some point over the next week and let him decide if he wants to smash it, throw it at her, or quietly put it in the decoration box.  I have done everything I can to allow him to make the next decision.  The story is too weird to not be funny, but too sad to ever make fun of again.  I kind of just want it out of my house. 

She pleaded not guilty at the arraignment.

Black and white film

There are things in this world that make me go “Huh?”  At least I know I am not crazy.

I have talked before about my ex, and specifically about how my world was inside of my relationship with him.  Having been out of it for long enough now, I  know better than to ask my ex for anything and expect cooperation. So when he recently showed up for some stuff my son has been struggling with, and that I have been frustrated with, it was a pleasant surprise.  I saw it as a positive that maybe he was coming around to seeing my children’s needs without having to get too wrapped up in fueling out rather tamed animosity.  Go parenting 101!

Because of that very fact, and because I never have to interact with him for things that *I* want, I had forgotten.  Forgotten that every single thing that you want from him comes with strings, comes with a price.  The price is always framed as “of your own choosing”. For me, it was always affection that was withheld because of some error or task not completed to his liking.  Everything from the dishwasher not loaded correctly, to my socks on the floor in front of my closet, to not being sexually aroused enough when I was woke up in the middle of the night, were all fatal flaws worthy of his passive distain and active rejection of my desires for intimacy and shared activities.  He would withhold a hug or a kiss, or not participate in a scheduled activity, claiming to be too tired from having to complete said chore to be able to go.  I didn’t unload the dishwasher, so he would, but then it meant he would not go with me to the beach in a pouty fit of exhaustion.

I did not know that he had been doing this exact same thing to my kids.  

My son desperately wants his father’s attention.  He wants to please him and spend time with him, building male bonds and doing male stuff.  In my son’s head, shooting BB guns, playing video games, going for bike rides, and hunting the beach for seaglass at the local beach dump are all the most perfect activities to do with his dad.  He is, after all, 12.  So when given the option of helping clean out the car, or play video games, video games are an easy choice.  Even I get that one, duh. This however has recently been met with the same kind of dismissal of blame as I used to get.  Seems if my son chooses to play video games instead of clean the car, suddenly his dad is too tired from not having gotten any help with the task that he cannot possibly go on the hike they had planned.  Or bike ride. Or movie. Or beach day.  Nothing.  My son gets nothing if he did not comply.  And of course, my ex quickly points out all the reasons why this is now my son’s fault.  

Oh. My. God. This is gaslighting.

I had forgotten just how much this happened.  I no longer had it in my life, but never imagined that my children would now be the targets.  This is not ordinary behavior. This is narcissistic, selfish, sociopath behavior.  And worse, my son was starting to believe it.  Like literally thinking that he was a bad son because he was not helping his dad with chores and needed to be punished because he made normal kid choices.  His dad, according to him, was right to not spend any extra time with him because he had so failed his dad by choosing Mario Kart instead of a hand-held vacuum.  My son was beginning to believe that he deserved to have his dad ignore him.  He believed he was wasting his time playing video games when he could have spent it with his dad, and that his dad not wanting at some later point in the day was completely his fault, and that he was to blame.

I was almost in tears as I cuddled next to my son and told him it is not his fault.  I told him that no matter what he did, if the adult does not want to do what they had said they were going to do, this is not the kid’s fault.  I told him that people who make plans that they don’t follow through on over and over again never wanted to do them to begin with, but would find a way to make your disappointment at their bad behavior all about something you had done.  I told him about times this had happened while his dad and I were still together where I believed I had so failed him that I did not ever feel worthy of having even the small things I requested.  I was never ever good enough to get any form of affection, and in my head, that was exactly what I had earned.  I said I was sorry that it was happening to him.

Together we went through all the things that should be withheld for cause, and things that should never be withheld.  We talked about hugs just being given, but that chores need to be done before you get to play.  We said that planned trips should not be canceled, but that preparations that are required need to be finished first.  Changing the plans was not okay, especially when the requirements for the anticipated plans were never outlined.  You cannot be held responsible for not knowing there were rules. 

I don’t think I have him completely convince yet.  His dad still walks on water, and with the little bit of praise and attention my son gets it is natural that he holds on tight to every bit of it.  I get it.  That is a hard position to even grasp who you are, much less walk away from. I had this kind of blame in my life before, and you begin to believe that you must accept what you get because it is so fragile, and that it might be taken at any time, and then where would you be.

Where would he be?  I couldn’t even be angry with his logic.  He is, after all, 12.  I guess I will just have to continue to show him.  Stay so consistent and in his corner that when and if he realizes what little he is getting he will know where to recharge.  He will have a safe place to fall, and someone to pick him back up.  Every bit of parenting skill I have to love him through it, even when I know that the very things I consider consistent might be exactly what he fights against.  There is no power play at work on my end, but there are expectations.  There is no punishment for offered choices, but there are still required chores.  There is no canceling of already made plans, but there is a limiting on plans that can be made.  I will play the hard game when I have to, but I will also not punish by neglect when things are done right.  There may not be a lot of material rewards in the process, but I hope he can find consistent drive for himself without having to rely on manipulation.  I will be his biggest cheerleader when he succeeds, and know that, really, I will have taught him to trust himself without me.  I will be the good parent, even if I am not the one he likes.  Love is like that.

Maybe next time I think “huh?” my son will be looking in the same direction I am and will be thinking the same thing, and that it really is not us, and we are not crazy. Then maybe we will have to watch the Ingrid Berman film together.

Green is the new Black

This morning, when I saw my daughter after her weekend with her father, she ran up to me and gave me a big hug.  She then pulled me aside and whispered “Mom, I am wearing a new bra.”

As a woman, I totally understand how new bras make you feel.  Pretty, worthy, flirty.  Do I dare say perky?  They are expensive items that are often rare in a poor girl’s world.  I was totally happy for her.  She picked out a totally appropriate bra for her age and size.  She is 12.  This is not her first bra; she has been “developing” for over a year, and the “first bra” ritual was over a year ago.  The one she showed me, and the two she described, were pretty cotton,  no push-ups or lacey things, and the exact right size for her long and lean, but growing body.

Her excitement was palpable.  I completely understood.

So it took every bit of my energy and theater skills to not sink in utter desperation that she did this not with her dad, but with her dad’s wife.

I am going to out-myself right this second and say that my main emotion was a kind of seriously fucked up jealousy.  Not just envy.  This was a total green-eyed monster bitch that almost made me pull out an nail file and sharpen my nails.  How the fuck did the psycho bitch my ex fucking married end up having any kind of girl bonding moment with MY daughter?  I mean, how the fuck does that happen?  And why the fuck did my daughter go with that bitch anyway?  Isn’t buying a bra (not the give-me-money kind of buy, THAT would have been acceptable) the kind of thing you do either alone, with your mom, or with someone you are having fun with (girlfriends and lovers are in the category)?  So what the fuck. How was this not something I was a part of.  I am her fucking mom.  

 My.Fucking.Job.She.Is.My.Fucking.Daughter.So.Hands.Off.Bitch.

Yes. Thank you.  That was my rant.  I felt every single bit of that rage kind of emotion in the first five second.  And then, I bit my tongue, told my daughter how pretty she was and that she made a good choice, and choked back the absolute knowledge that other people get a piece of her and I get no say. Not one tiny bit.  She gets to pick who and what she wants in her life, and I get to stand back and watch.  I can choose to either be the supportive mother I hope I am modeling (93% of the time), or I can be the controlling, angry, mean, psycho that reared her ugly fangs before getting a grip (and a clue) and taking a stab at the highroad.

So in the 15 seconds of ugly, and the five hours since of it rattling in my brain, I came to conclusion that kinda startled me (yeah, what delusional world was I living in?) and maybe made me grow up just a little.  I figured out that my daughter gets to have her own life (duh!) but that maybe, just maybe, I get my own life, too.  She can figure out what she wants, who she chooses to get it from, how the interactions go, whom she trusts, why someone is in her life, and what her own boundaries are.  And, wow, if I can get past my own fucked up head, so do I.

She is clearly handling this better than I am, the letting go of other people’s choices that have nothing to do with me.  I still crave consistency and control, left over insecurity from the chaos that was my relationship with my daughter’s father.  I wrap myself so tightly into the identity of her (and her brother’s) mother from a time when if I did not have that identity, I surely would have spun off the planet into some dangerous nebula of toxic gases, leaving in my wake a type of destruction that only addicts and asylum patients can relate to. (You did read my rant above, right?  Yeah, Jack Nicolson’s got nothing on me some days.)

I will go home tonight, and do the good mom thing, and fix dinner, and do laundry, and read over homework.  I will play some board game, and read to them, and talk about our days.  I may tell my daughter of my feelings, admit my weaknesses, but probably not.  I think I will also text some friends, read some porn, watch an R rated movie with my headphones, and paint my toenails, and try, somewhere in the midst of all of that, to keep trying to find my identity, and not be afraid to have it be something else, that letting go of the fear might just help me find another place to hang on.  Maybe that next place will be kinder, and feel like a star instead of a blackhole. 

I also think I will buy myself a new bra.

In the reality of the world

I am about to have something new in my life.

No, not anything daring or drastic, like regular sex or a pet.  I am about to have Sundays, twice a month, to myself.  My children are about to start having overnights with their dad, with him dropping them off at school on Monday mornings.

In the reality of the world, this does not change much.  When I picked them up at 7pm on Sunday nights, we drove home, I fed them something (they were always hungry, but that is a different issue), we would read and go over some homework, and before I knew it, we were brushing teeth and it was bedtime.  Nice, quiet little Sunday ritual that lasted about an hour, including drive time.

I have to admit, I really liked this bit of time with my kids. But again, in the reality of the world, it was only an hour, and the Sunday overnights will only happen 13 times in the next year, once you factor in all the vacations and holidays.  13. Only 13.  Less than two weeks.  Doesn’t seem like much.

It had me devastated last week, for a few hours that I did not hide from my children.  Not because I can’t do math.  I had already figured out the 13 day thing, so that was not the issue.  What had me freaked was that my kids had asked it not to happen, had appropriately told that to two different counselors and directly to their father, and none of them, not one, listened one little bit.  I could do nothing about it, because no matter how much I want to be able to write the story of the relationship my kids get to endure enjoy, I don’t get to.

So no matter how this turns out, I get no say, and the loss of control has me freaked out.  It is the codependent in me, I know, but freaking out just the same.

In the midst of all this, my ten year old had a total meltdown of his own. One that almost got him kicked out of a planned event at his care center.  While playing some kind of basketball related game, something happened that seemed unfair, and my son’s reaction was to block the kid and then try to trip him.  If that wasn’t enough, when the adult leader caught him, the other kid shut up, and my son got verbally mean to the leader, and more than a little mouthy.

Sigh.

It took two days for he and I to be able to talk before he could tell me the whole story without one of us being defensive and more than a little pissed.  When we worked it all out, he knew that reacting the way he did was not a smart idea, but wanted to know why some people can do things and get away with them, and when he does them, he is punished.  And more, why no one bothered to listen to him in the process to find the truth out before the punishment was handed down.

This is big, and without even having to have a light bulb moment, he knew that he was angry because adults around him weren’t listening to him, and that even when he told the truth, nothing really mattered because he was being forced to comply.  He flat-out said he was sure that talking to adults was a waste of time because his dad and counselors didn’t listen, and that the one adult who was listening (me) was unable to make anything happen.

Ouch.

He was right.

So instead, I had to admit to him that I am scared and angry about all of it, too, and that I feel just as helpless.  And together (with the help of his 12-year old sister), we came up with what we can do to make US better even if we have to suck it up for now that other people get to make out choices and we have to comply.

I said I was going to write on Sundays.

I said I was going to miss them like crazy and write something I could share with them on Monday nights. 

I said I was going to come up with a plan to spend the extra money I was not going to be using on gas to come pick them up and hour each way.  Did they want to help? I was still listening, even if no one else was.  What were they going to do?

This will be new.

I will miss the drive, to tell the truth.  I will miss my kids terribly.  I will miss the Sunday night ritual and the bonding.  I am putting my faith in the Universe that we all will survive it, and that, in the reality of the world, it is only 13 days.

I can only hope that while I am in my reality, theirs will be okay, too.  Maybe I will write about that on my first Sunday out.

Loaded

**This is the disclaimer. Below, though true, contains some graphic language and adult content. If you don’t want to read it, stop now, leave this blog, and find your happy place.**

Tonight is Sunday. So that means I picked up my children from their visitation weekend with their father. My ex has remarried, and if you go back and read other posts to this blog, it describes for you my feelings about the relationship, the breakup, and where I am now, so that won’t be covered here. What I am telling you about is my ex-husband’s wife, and the feelings I have about her, as they relate to my former relationship, and what, if there was a wish I had for her, I would tell her.

She came up to me tonight with one word. Sorry. I have heard this word out of her mouth before, and like before I started to ignore it. Two years ago she had called me a fucking cunt in front of my children in a public tirade directed at me while her whole family watched, and followed it up with a cruel email to me sent from my ex’s email account telling me that I deserved to have my first son die. Not her shining moment, and actually sealed my view of her as vile pretty solidly for all eternity. Having heard her call me a bitch several times since, call my daughter a bitch (just like her mom), and be nasty mean to my son, I am not really convinced of her repentance, and the apologies that have come since then are moot and unbelieved. Tonight, I told her exactly why she would always be vile to me, actually even using the word “vile” to describe her to her face, for having pushed the only two buttons I had, so completely, that there really was no hope of her recovery from that, apology and forgiveness or not.

But I also starting thinking about how trapped and desperate she might be to still be apologizing to me. It has to be coming from my ex, who has previously blamed his and my inability to communicate on my unwillingness to interact with his wife. He blamed her for causing the problem to begin with. Whatever, he is delusional. No, not enough to feel sorry for her, but just enough for me to understand where she probably is in her relationship with my ex at this point, if history and timing follow similar patterns.

She is just over 4 years into her relationship with him. At the four-year mark, I had a baby. A not quite one-year-old amazing daughter who laughed and could make you smile any time. I was breast-feeding still, and she didn’t sleep much, but my ex and I had started to return our sex life back to normal.

Normal for us though had been a minimum of daily, and usually twice or more most days. Our sex was often one sided, with him achieving orgasm much more often than I did, and was consistently rough and demanding, wherever in the house we happened to be. I am not a prude, or even afraid to admit that I enjoy frequent and sometimes rough sex. I also like a balance, and that was most often achieved in the middle of the night with quiet, gentler sex where I could get off more slowly, or felt okay to use one of the toys we owned on myself once he fell back to sleep. So the rougher daily sex was a mental compromise.

This was also the point in our relationship where large amounts of pornography entered our world. I always knew my ex liked porn. He showed it to me periodically, still photography pictures of women and men, fucking, using toys, whatever. I knew he viewed more that he didn’t show me, and never really questioned it, thinking to myself that if it turned him on and I was getting off, no big deal, right? I was delusional and very codependent, with his alcoholism, his physical needs of both sex and housewife duties, his complete dislike for being a father when it interfered with my ability to take care of him, and with the verbal and emotional abuse from him that went with my own sick need to want to please him. Ignoring some photos in the face of all that was actually pretty easy.

Back to the pornography. He had been drinking one night, not unusual, and wanted sex. My daughter had miraculously fallen asleep before nine, and he and I were messing around on the computer, sending each other horny instant messages from keyboards that were literally two feet away from each other, while also surfing the internet and reading emails. He sent me a “come sit on my lap” type message, probably with the words fuck and slut in the text, and I went over and did what he asked. He was in his office chair, and I had removed the bottom half of my clothing enroute (the two whole feet away) and sat down, letting him penetrate me as I faced away from him. I was enjoying the position, and was feeling the momentum, when he reached around me to the computer and showed me a close up of a woman’s vagina with what looked like a shiny metal dildo sticking out from where her pretty manicured nails had her spread apart. As our sex got more intense, he zoomed out of the picture, slowly, one small step at a time, until finally, at his own climax, he was zoomed all the way out. The shiny metal object wasn’t a dildo after all. It was the barrel of a gun.

He held me there until I climaxed and I knew, without a doubt, that the pornography had crossed over. This was no longer about sex and excitement, this was about total and complete control. That was what excited him, and I was expected to comply. And in my sick little world, I did. I wanted him so badly, wanted my family to work so badly, wanted to feel loved so badly, that the verbal, and now emotional abuse, seemed normal.

The pornography got much worse after that, with periods where even he knew it was sick and over the top, and would stop. These were usually during his brief periods of sobriety, but even then I never again was placed in a position of shock like that first time. I was easily able to divert it to other sex or other positions so that I did not have to participate in the viewing. I could simply ignore it. And I did ignore it, letting myself believe that if I wasn’t watching it, it wasn’t really happening. I didn’t pay any attention that it was really twisted behavior about power.

So what does that have to do with my ex’s current wife? Maybe nothing. Maybe just my remembrance of where I was, and my gratitude to not be there now, and knowledge that I will never be there again with him or anyone else for that matter. But maybe it was her under-her-breath comment after I had just told her that she was vile when she said, in a voice not meant for me to hear, “You have no idea.”

The woman-I-used-to-be heard her and projected that maybe she was lost inside the relationship just like I was. Just like his first ex-wife was. There is a small part of me that wishes I cared about her at all, in that woman-to-woman way, so I could warn her, maybe. Or maybe not. I can’t judge their relationship, and don’t want to try. I am just planning on going back to ignoring her, and healing myself. I hope I am wrong, and that the fucked up stuff isn’t happening to her and she really is just a mean fucking bitch. And I hope that if it is, she gets out. I can’t help her, and I won’t, because I can only save myself. And I honestly don’t like her enough do anything about it. But I hope she realizes that apologizing any more won’t change anything about my past, or her future, and that I do have some idea, I heard her, even if I don’t ever show it. Power and control under the roof of sick men is like that, and figures out, if she need to, that she doesn’t need to have a gun sticking out of her vagina before knowing things are seriously wrong. No apology required.