I am converting this blog into one for my children. They may never see it. Blogger may go bankrupt. I may lose the account password again. But my heart is full and my brain is busy so...
Sarah and Alexander, if you are reading this, it is hopefully YEARS after the Christmas of 2012, the first one where Alexander lived with your dad. It is December 26, 2012, and we've just had a horrible fight over the fact that you intend on spending the holiday with your dad until January 3. And I am both flabbergasted and betrayed.
Flabbergasted that your dad once again has rewritten history. Denied he said things he did, told me I was crazy, taunted me yet again with the fact that your grandaddy was nuts and I was just like him, told me he never got more than four days of visitation at the holidays, and, most importantly, convinced you of the same thing.
That is why I feel betrayed. For five years I was meticulous about giving your dad his visitation. So many times in the summer I let you stay extra weeks, because I was working and he was not and it didn't make sense to have you sit at home alone. I would carefully divide the holidays in half and change in the middle. I would not count the day we changed as a day of visitation for either of us, and if the number was uneven (7 vs 8) I let your dad have the eight. You never spent both Christmas and New Year's with the same parent, with the exception of that first year, when you spent both with your dad. But today your dad rewrote history and said that he never got more than four days and that it was common for the one who got Christmas to get New Year's too. And you went with it like it was true.
I went without child support and tried not to blame your dad for not working, at least not in your presence. In 2010 I gave you one-third of my Christmas budget because he had no money at all, so you could express your love for him and his relatives with gifts.
Your dad didn't work from June 2008 until February 2009. In January 2009 I filed for divorce. By the end of that month I had a phone call that came to me by accident, setting up an interview for him. My curiosity got the better of me in early February. I had my office mate Kim call the school and ask for your dad's conference time. She was told he didn't have one because he only worked part-time. But your dad lied to me (and maybe you) for the next month and said he didn't have a job at all. He didn't admit to having one until the end of March. I guess that is when he went full-time. I never told you he lied, and I never told him I knew he had.
In September 2011 we went to court for unpaid child support. After a year of "I can't get a job anywhere doing anything in the entire state of Texas," (although I am still at a loss as to why he couldn't substitute in another district) your dad had a job by the end of October. The coincidence cannot have escaped you. Twice he can't get a job, until I take court action, and then he gets one within a month both times.
When we went to court in September, he was assigned the minimum amount of support, based on a full-time job at minimum wage. When the issue of the arrears came up, I asked that they not be assessed until January. We were due back in court then and I was pretty sure your dad would have a job. Your dad's lawyer had nothing to do but sit there. I was the one fighting not to bury your dad under debt he had no way to pay. Your dad never knew that and wouldn't believe me even if I told him, and of course his lawyer never said he didn't do anything.
When Alexander said he wanted to live with your dad I didn't fight. I left my job and moved. I felt bad about keeping the child support, and I started returning it as soon as I could. Over and over I proved that I was fair and that nothing mattered to me as much as your happiness.
And in the end none of it mattered. If your dad said, "You never spent more than four days with me" then you didn't. I spent five years acting fairly and honorably, and in the end it counted for...well, far less than having a PS3. That is why, right now, I feel so betrayed. It is like neither one of you really knows who I am.
You blame me for guilt tripping you. Three out of five years with no child support, with rarely (I can't say never, but I really did try very hard) a bad word to say about your dad and NEVER keeping you from visiting him and you think I am all about the guilt trip. Guys, if I was, would I have spent those five years saying, "It's okay to love your dad and to want to be with him"? Wouldn't I have harped on the unpaid child support, the lack of a job, tried to make you see me as the more valuable parent because I was the one who stuck around and stuck with it?
The year Sarah was gone Alexander and I had a great relationship. At least I thought we did. We got along with almost no arguments. It was like when our mediator left we discovered we didn't need one. Now I am being given the impression all of that was an illusion. Alexander and I have a horrible relationship and he avoids me. He even lied to your dad so I wouldn't be the one to take him to Waco to see "The Hobbit." I don't understand how things got so bad, other than Alexander now lives with your dad. Your dad used to badmouth me all the time when we were first separated, and I can't help but think he still is, although more subtly.
You hate for me to compare your treatment of the two of us. But the truth is your dad would NEVER have tolerated getting four days out of sixteen and I would have NEVER asked it of him. But if I said anything I was guilt tripping. If I said that what I was supposed to do was take what I was offered and shut up I was guilt tripping. If I did anything but take what I was offered, however little it was, I was guilt tripping. And yes, this blog is one big time-delayed guilt trip. You know why? Because you need to see your behavior for what it was, and mine for what it was. Otherwise you will repeat it.
That day I asked you a question, and neither of you had an answer. I asked how you wanted me to behave. You couldn't tell me, "Take what you're offered and shut up," because that would mean I was right. Sarah finally said, "Compromise." But when I asked her what compromise she wanted, she couldn't tell me. Because she didn't want one. She wanted capitulation without protest, but not to the point that she felt unwanted.
So I am trying it the way you say you want. Today is December 26, 2012. Today is the day I have resolved to never again ask either of you to spend time with me. That suggestion will come from you or it won't come. But I have no intention of waiting for you. I am starting a life that doesn't include you. If you want to join it, you will. If not, well, I will have a life.
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