Game On.

You start to put your life back together. You come back from this incredible darkness, so dark that the light on the other side actually looks appealing. But you don't go towards it. You have responsibilities here, a tiny life that is depending on you and only you. So you pull yourself up. You go from being unemployed to working full time, all the while taking care of this tiny life. You find yourself incredibly lucky with this job, blessed, because they realize that family is important. And you carve a niche for yourself in this company, where they realize what you have to contribute. Probably more than most other people in your life, they realize your potential, your value, and do what they can to help it blossom, all the while allowing you to balance this new life you have. Pretty soon the darkness starts to fade. You start to discover who you are. Not the person you were pretending to be for the majority of your adult life, but the real you. Not long after you realize that the dark days, the truly dark days, are becoming a mere memory, almost one you have to remind yourself actually happened. There are times when it does get cloudy again, but that's all. A shadow. One that is fairly easy to fend off now. You feel strong. And while with this whole parenting alone thing you still aren't completely stable on your feet, you don't feel like a complete failure.

Not yet anyway, she's not a teenager... but I digress...

And then a day like today happens.

From my previous post, you can probably deduce I was up with a sick baby all night. And I was glad to do it. But I am tired. And I'm sure that probably has more to do with any darkness than the actual situation, but its darkness nonetheless. Darkness I feared would happen, but am still caught off guard by.

I got an email from the ex today. And it left me with a bad taste in my mouth at the time. Not because he was rude, because he wasn't, not because even really there was anything out of the ordinary with it. The email started with him asking....no....TELLING me when he was going to have visitation next. Which is not uncommon, so I just brush right past it. And then the next statement was where the bad taste came in.

"Also, Maura's insurance will be changing back to my city insurance."

I'm sure I've mentioned previously about how he cancelled that insurance and put her into a cheap one DAYS after the divorce decree was finalized to save himself a couple hundred bucks. And I have consistently fought him on putting her back on it. To the point of taking him back to court to ask for the court to mandate it. But no. I finally gave up that fight. And now, out of the blue, with nothing to preempt it, he's going to put her back on. Pardon me if I'm a little paranoid, suspicious, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, I am. I was. I even interrupted my BFF's trip in Oregon with family she hasn't seen in 20 years to talk it out with her. To confirm for myself that I wasn't being unnecessarily paranoid, that his actions on this were suspicious. I was going to email him back and ask him why. And to ask him how changing her insurance would affect her pre-existing conditions.

But I hadn't had the chance to do it yet, and wasn't real worried about it, I'd get around to it when I had time. Bad taste mostly gone.

I checked my mail later in the day, and in the midst of the junk mailings and the letter from my former insurance company (another story for another day), I noticed a letter with the return address for an Eric Karl. And immediately in my minds eye I could see the registered mail notice I had gotten a few weeks ago but hadn't had an opportunity to go pick up from the post office. The name on the notice was Eric Karl as well.

Slight twinge. But only because of the registered mail thing. Not because of the email, because I had already worked through my suspicions on that, had a plan of action, and it was no longer an issue.

On closer inspection, Eric Karl is apparently an attorney at law. I immediately started wondering what bills I had outstanding. Thinking this was an attempt to collect a debt I didn't know about, or at the very least to collect the $2500 debt I did know about, but have put on the ex's shoulder because he's the idiot who caused it, I opened the letter. No big deal.

You know how sometimes when you open the mail, one thing will jump out at you above the rest? Even if its buried in a mass gathering of alphabet letters, it just screams at you. Like how some of those words do in the word scrambles. Here's what screamed at me:

"RE: Cause Number XXXXXXX, In the Matter of the Marriage of Mandy and James, and in the Interest of A Child; in the Judicial District Court, Texas"

And that was when the darkness came. I didn't even have to read the rest of the letter to know what it was about. All the pieces fell into place. The suspicion. The strangely calm email. The registered letter. And it got dark. Because now I know what I have always been afraid of, but never thought would actually happen.

He's trying to take her from me.

And so its dark again. But this dark? Its different. This dark isn't despair, or helplessness. This dark? This is rage. This is pure rage.

The anger I had before was because I didn't feel like I had a leg to stand on. I had no defense. I doubted my strength. All I had was my words, and my anger, and I cycled on it. Because that's all I had.

Now?

I hope that son of a bitch has his seat belt buckled.

Comments

Catkins said…
Are you EFFING KIDDING ME?!
Where in the world is he getting the idea that he is qualified to take care of her? Is he remembering the right history, or did he watch The Pursuit of Happyness and think that that was HIS life.
I'm so mad for you. I wish I could hit him, or break his window, or hit him in his balls, or egg his house, or CASTRATE him so that he is NEVER able to have children.
Seriously, I'm THISCLOSE to calling him witha blocked number and threatening his penis.
Who the FUCK does he think he is?!

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