12/24/95

on christmas eve 1995 i had lost custody of my son andy after bekah chose to move in with her father and he used the opportunity to slash my child support [which i had never tried to have increased in over 7 years]. in february of that year i had left my job of 18 years for a position that theoretically offered a future. two months later i was fired because i insisted on being paid on payday. by christmas i had been evicted from the apartment i had maintained since my 1987 divorce and was living at my sister's house in Lancaster while attending computer school in Torrance...that was a hell of a commute.

from my diary, 12-24-95:
So just sit here and wait on tomorrow. Know I'll be strong for it, I won't crumble. Good God if I WAS going to do that it would have been before I was 1 1/2 months to a Professional certificate and a REAL opportunity to better myself and earn back my babies.

Shit don't start that pain. Don't gnaw at that sore. Don't think about the little daily death this estrangement has meant. Don't keep thinking about petty revenge, like slashed tires (over and over and over and over) or all the other petty mischievous ways that won't really change the past or fix the reality that I am in someone else's house with a mere fraction of the children I should be raising DAILY.
That pain is physical - my heart hurts.
Tears that will ream the ocean well inside of me and the primal scream is: ANDY!
BEKAH!
Let it lie.

Cry.

Weep woman weep
awake or asleep -
Clutch at a pillow that isn't a child
Scream, sob, let yourself be
WILD------------
Your babies were taken, taken, taken
By a man who sleeps just fine -
Your motherhood is DEVASTATED -
where's respect? gratitude? recognition?
Where's your daughter? Where's your son?
ha. sad laugh. and that was when my children were all alive.

my ex-husband never seemed to respect that as my children's mother, i would always be important to them. When Bekah died he respected me. thank gawd, or bekah - anyway.

he is married and has been for years. tonight i got the strangest most disturbing email from this woman, who is apparently feeling extraordinarily contemptuous toward my 18-year-old son. [i NEVER wanted him to leave me - her husband took me to court to get out of paying child support after my eviction - i compare his actions to that of a common thief who happens upon a wreck and lifts the victim's wallet...and, shit, i have to be way past that particular bitterness. the shit, shit shit things people do].

anyway. i am not going to elaborate further. but i will say this. He just turned 18 years old in October, and his sister was murdered less than one year ago. GIVE MY SON A BREAK.

it really fries my ass when people affect superiority in situations in which they really should just recognize how lucky they are.
- posted by barbara @ 7/12/2002 11:56:00 PM