Home > Rayne > It’s Personal: The Kids

It’s Personal: The Kids

March 20th, 2015

Last year, I wrote about why I don’t talk about my kids. I mostly only focused on the issues that are directly related to me having kids as a teenager.

There is so much more.

Isn’t there always?

The following contains discussion of domestic abuse and how abuse victims are treated by the court system.

My ex had been convicted of selling marijuana. He was charged with other things related to selling weed to minors, contributing to the delinquency of minors, and building a gang of teenagers, but the DA didn’t have the evidence to prosecute. In an effort to get my ex out of their small town, the DA agreed to Shock, postponed sentencing until after I gave birth, and tried to force me to move with threats of arrest and promises to make my ex’s life difficult in prison.

They couldn’t make anything stick to me because I wasn’t involved. I was there because I was afraid to leave. There was literally nothing I could do about the things he was doing. Believe me, I tried. I even tried to talk him out of selling to the kid who ended up being his downfall. He promised me he wouldn’t, then did it anyway. So between that and the abuse I suffered at his hand, I wasn’t overly concerned about how difficult his life was in prison.

The DA made good on one promise, though. In the hope that I’d move, he placed my ex far enough away that going to visit him was nigh to impossible. I think I was able to find someone to take me once.

When I had a nervous breakdown, and was finally caught attempting suicide, my ex’s friend, DW, took in my children. I’d worked with her husband, MW, and I’d known them a while. They’d taken my youngest girls on weekends a couple times because DW isn’t able to have children, and she wanted to play house with mine. Things went fine. The babies were always happy and healthy when they came back. So when she offered to take in all of the kids until I was well, I agreed.

When my ex got out of prison, he tried to convince me to put the kids up for adoption. I refused, and started trying to force him to help me build a home for the kids to come to. A lot of irrelevant shit happened, not the least of which being me attempting suicide again, and then I met M and my ex disappeared in the middle of the night. We were in the middle of a custody battle with DW.

My ex still claims he left because I was seeing someone else. I went on my first date with M the night he left. After questioning people I’d called friend, I learned that my ex had been planning for months to abandon me and the kids without telling me.

My ex dropped out of the kids’ lives shortly after he moved to Virginia. He met new women and had new babies, all the while talking to me and trying to control me from Virginia. If I didn’t leave M, he’d make sure I never saw the kids again. If I didn’t do this, he’d do that. Same shit, different day.

I finally told him off. If it weren’t for M standing right next to me, reminding me that he had my back, promising me he’d never let my ex hurt me again, I don’t think I would have been able to do it.

My ex disappeared for a while. Years, at least.

DW got involved with MW’s stepbrother, T, who was a convicted attempted murderer. Eventually MW moved out, and his stepbrother moved in.

While M and I were fighting DW and T for visitation and custody (and my ex was nowhere to be found), DW and T abused my children. They almost killed my son. During one of the long stretches when I could not get DW to answer my calls or adhere to the visitation order, there were 11 founded reports to child protective services before the day my children were finally removed from their care. Despite the fact that M and I were still in the middle of a custody battle with DW, CPS never once notified me. When they removed my children from DW’s care, they put them in foster care and refused to give me any information about how they were doing or where they were.

My ex reappeared after receiving the notification of removal from CPS. It had been at least two years since my children had heard from their father. This after him being in prison for almost two years. They hardly knew him.

M and I asked the Department of Social Services (and specifically the foster care worker who was assigned to our case) for help getting things together for the kids so they could come home. They said absolutely not; that me and my husband would have to figure out how to stand on our own two feet before they’d even let me see my children, much less have custody. And then they paid for everything my ex needed to have a home for the kids; clothes, furniture…they even paid for my ex and his wife to come up here and have a birthday party on the beach for one of the kids.

Despite the evidence against DW and T, the court chose to keep the charges in family court, and gave DW and T a conditional discharge and a restraining order. Then they awarded custody of my children to their father.

I deal with a lot of guilt surrounding this. I obsess over what ifs as if they can reverse time. What if I’d been more present during the court case? What if I’d been more emotionally stable when we went to the mental health screening? What if I wasn’t still being harassed by my ex and wasn’t paralyzed with fear? What if I’d known what the fuck I was doing and what I could do when I entered that court room? What if…what if…what if…?

There are days the what ifs almost render me catatonic.

I recently learned that this is actually pretty normal when it comes to family court and abuse victims. I wish I’d known all this when it was going on. Add another what if to the list. But it has helped ease some of the guilt.

I tried to stay in contact with my children via telephone. Every time I called and my ex was the only one home, he spent the entire call berating me. When I was allowed to talk to my children, he’d begin berating me again the second they handed him back the phone. More than once, M made me hang up on him because I was hysterical. And eventually, M told me I wasn’t allowed to call anymore. By this time, my ex was refusing me access to my children, and intentionally trying to trigger a meltdown. He’d told me to go kill myself more than once. There was no reason for me to call, anymore. The only thing it was doing was breaking me.

At some point, my oldest two created Facebook pages. They were really young…10 or 11. I was livid. Not only would this open them up to a whole new set of predators, but it would give DW and T access to them and their lives. And I wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t long before DW tried to contact my kids through their profiles. My ex and his (now ex) wife, E, didn’t bother calling the police. They just gave DW a stern talking to. But as far as I know, it worked, so whatever.

I’ve used Facebook to keep an eye on them since. For most of their lives, it’s the only way I’ve been able to get an idea of how they’re doing. I found out my son broke his collar bone from Facebook. From Facebook, I learned that my ex was still the same deadbeat dad he’s always been, only, for now, he was still living with them, even if he wasn’t actually present. I found out how strong my oldest two are. I learned how surprisingly well (all things considered) all four of my kids are doing. I found out about every argument they had with their father, and how angry they were with him, and that they’d figured out who he really is at a very young age.

Then one day, I opened Facebook and saw that the kids were still listed in Virginia, but their father was in Texas.

I blew it off. People put fake info on Facebook all the time. Hell, my Facebook profile is totally fake. I was made to create it for work when I worked for EF. The only reason I haven’t deleted it is because it’s attached to apps we can’t use without Facebook; which is the stupidest thing a company can do from where I sit, but here I am keeping my Facebook account open just so I can use these stupid apps, so you know…what do I know?

Months later, I had an email from E. She finally clued me in on what was going on. She and my ex had gotten a divorce, partly because he was having an affair (my son caught some girl giving him a blow job on their back porch) and partly because of a dispute over pot. Fifteen months before E contacted me, my ex had packed up and moved to Texas with blow job girl, and left the kids with E. She said that he told her that if she told me what was going on, he’d take the kids from her.

Virginia’s family court never contacted me. Granted, I’d planned on signing my rights over to E, and had written a notarized letter to that effect, but as far as I know, the adoption process still has never been completed. DSS has since come after me for child support, which they couldn’t do if the adoption was finalized. They cited financial reasons. When E wrote me, she told me that it became pay for the adoption or pay for the divorce.

The kids had since called their father out on some fucked up thing he’d done, and so he wasn’t paying child support or calling them. He’d blocked my oldest daughter on Facebook like a freaking child.

And I wasn’t surprised. That’s his MO. You do things his way, or you can fuck right off. You don’t get to doubt him, or be mad at him, or see fault in anything he does. He’s always right. He never does anything wrong.

I was furious.

He fought me in court for these kids. Then he violently shoved me out of their lives. Then he blamed everything that he and they have been through on me. And now here he was abandoning them. Again.

I don’t talk to E anymore. I tried. I couldn’t handle it. I want to talk to my children. I want to tell them the truth about my relationship with their father, the reason they ended up where they did, and to ask them to forgive me. But that’s probably just me being selfish. I know I don’t have any right to those things.

I am trying to stop checking their Facebooks. I’ve been ordered to stop, and I haven’t checked them since. M’s afraid I’m going to slide backwards. That I’ll end up a basket case again. I don’t blame him. I can feel the pull of despair on the fringes of the overwhelming sadness and guilt that has clenched my heart.

Earlier this week, I checked my son’s Facebook, and found a long post about what a piece of shit his father is. What I read socked me in the gut harder than anything’s hit me in a really long time.

My ex is expecting another child on the 24th. He’s abandoned eight children (four are mine) with three different women, and now he’s having a ninth child with a fourth woman (blow job girl) to whom he’s engaged.

As if that isn’t bad enough, when my oldest children tried to talk to him about it, he blocked them on Facebook, hung up on them on the phone, and then started rejecting their calls.

I checked my ex’s profile and found him magnanimously telling his friends and family that he was cutting negative people from his life. He painted himself as a poor, harassed soul who couldn’t be happy because these evil negative people always had something to say about his new life. He flat out blamed the kids for the problems he was having in his relationship with blow job girl, and blamed the kids for the problems in his relationship with them.

Apparently, his children aren’t allowed to have an opinion about how much he’s shitted all over them. He doesn’t have to act like a parent because they weren’t being good children and kissing his ass.

I am so very proud of them for standing their ground. I guess there’s a little of me in them after all.

Then I started reading the comments. NEVER READ THE COMMENTS.

People who have been in my children’s lives since birth, witnessed the abuse I suffered, were present when the ex refused to support his children, are feeding my ex all this bullshit about, “Oh, the kids are turning 18. They’ll come to you and learn the truth,” and calling the new baby a ‘gift from God.’ Which makes my kids, what? Whale shit? And their half-siblings who their father also walked out on, and who are far too young to understand what’s going on and question him? What about them? They’re whale shit, too?

Those stupid, blind people would probably say that the new baby is a miracle because blow job girl wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids. Neither was I. At least two of Dickface’s children almost died and almost killed their mothers during child birth. But I suppose they’re still whale shit.

But here’s the thing. My kids are crazy smart. They’re super observant. And they know exactly who their father is, despite E’s original lies about his motivation for abandoning them. I’m thanking my lucky stars for that, and I hope they hold on to that, and don’t let him feed them bullshit when the anger and hurt has subsided some.

It’s what I’m holding on to. It’s what’s keeping me sane when all I want to do is fall apart for them.

What a piece of shit.

Anyway.

I had to put it down so I can put it away. Judge me if you wanna. I don’t give a fuck anymore. At this point, nobody can judge me more harshly than I judge myself.

In any case, this on top of being sick already…I need to take some time, I think. I’ll be around on social media some, and I may post another piece in this series. I know these personal posts have been kind of negative. Hopefully, I’ll have something happy to write soon.

<3

Categories: Rayne Tags:
  1. March 20th, 2015 at 10:29 | #1

    I said I wouldn’t judge you before this, and I meant it. Hell, I mean it even more now.We judge our selves unfairly, and harshly, too often.

    You sound, maybe, like you’ve made a big step by writing this. Maybe,just maybe, you will find a way to… I dunno…. forgive yourself?

    As ever, we wish you well.

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