Running with Scissors

My husband and I have a new nickname for his ex-wife,  "Runs with Scissors".  If you ever see the movie "Running with Scissors"  you will understand our life a little better.

Narcissist or Bipolar?

God, I pray she is Bipolar and we have hope. Because if she is Narcissistic we have no hope. After tonight I am just not sure.

I owe our cuss jar quite a few quarters tonight for the 4 letter words that have escaped my mouth directed at my husband's ex.  Saying I am angry would be an understatement.  My husband and step-son had an agreement that he would call my step-son tonight.  I had a sick feeling this would go south when my husband came home on Monday from dropping him off and said that he and my step-son had talked about this.  I have hoped for the best since Monday though. We even emailed letting her know the call was coming in weekly report we send her every Monday.  My husband called a little before 6 and had to leave voice-mail.  At a little before 8 she texted him saying that my step-son did not want to talk to him.  (Amazing how her texting suddenly worked, when my step-son was in ER for 4 hours and she called only afterwards, only because she didn't have the money for the medication, she claimed she didn't have texting)  I should have just gone and grabbed the cuss jar when  I read the text from her as the words just came flying "THAT MANIPULATIVE B*&%!"

 

My husband and I took a moment to calm down, then my husband called and asked to speak with my step-son. This is where I really get pissed.  She told my husband he couldn't speak with his son that his son did not want to speak with him.  My husband told her to just put him on the phone that he needed to speak with him.  She then had her boyfriend act like a child in the back ground saying "I don't want to speak with my daddy. Don't make me speak to my daddy."  My step son NEVER says "daddy."  I have known my husband for more than 3 years and my step-son has never called him "daddy" it is ALWAYS dad.  My husband said that the voice didn't even sound right, that it even sounded like his ex's boyfriend.  Any kudos the boyfriend had obtained and worked to get over the last few months with us were just lost.

My husband is furious.

I am about to finally be working again.  With that comes health insurance for the whole family.  I think counseling is a must. If she doesn't want to participate that will be on her.  

My patients is worn.

I am frustrated and tired.

I am an introvert that needs their time alone and doesn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel where I will get it.

I am looking for jobs today, decided to expand my search to , oh, anywhere in the world.  I am doing it because I want away from my home today.  Having a place to go and work 10+ hours a day feels safe and away from my home. 

Fear

Is she just really scared?  I am going through a free co-parenting course online.  It is one that was suggested for my husband’s ex-wife, as she has stated she can’t afford to go to a co-parenting class.  I have learned a lot.  It has been a good experience for me.  In it, it talks a lot about fear, and all the emotions that it can manifest itself through, such as Anger.  (She has been ordered to Anger management too, which is probably a good idea since she requested a restraining order against herself.)  We go to court on July 23^rd for a custody hearing; we are supposed to get custody if she has not signed up for both anger management and co-parenting.

Today we got the first e-mail from her in seven months that did not directly berate my husband.  Still, it feels full of Anger to me; to be frank it feels like her attempt to create Drama.  She usually creates quite a stir just before a hearing, and usually at the exchange.  Our exchanges are now supervised, so for her to do it there is going to be reported to the judge.  The email was to be an update e-mail regarding my step-son’s week.  She added a concern at the end about a nightmare she says step-son had.  In reading it though, I wonder if, reading between the lines, she is the one that is scared.  She is the one who feels like she is in a nightmare.  Are these perhaps her bad dreams?  She knows that next week could change everything if she has not been cooperating and following the order.  Is this a plea from her: (names have been deleted for obvious reasons)

Our son told me yesterday morning that he had a nightmare the night before where he was at your house (his dad’s) and you wouldn’t let him go with me for a very long time…. that I kept coming back and you continued to not let him go. He said that you made him stay in his room on his bed and he didn’t know why but his brother (your other son, from your other marriage) was on the bed with him too. He said that you called the police on me because I wouldn’t stop coming back to try to get him.

Then last night he was VERY scared to go to sleep without me.  He begged me to stay and sleep with him. I tried to let him know that everything was ok… that I wasn’t going anywhere and I was going to still be here in the morning… however this didn’t ease his concern. This morning he was very clingy… wanting hugs and kept kissing my arm, hand cheek….

This is all very sad because what he had and called a nightmare is really reality… what really happened only a few weeks ago. This means that what happened had a HUGH impact on him and causing undue stress. My hopes are that we can get on a better path for his sake …as what has been happening between us within the exchanges is clearly not healthy for him.

Please take note of this.. of what is going on with our child and have some empathy for him and his feelings about the situation while he is at your house this week… now knowing his fears as I have explained them to you… and pay attention to the fact that he is having …what he called “nightmares”… about it.

In a sense she is right, this did happen a few weeks ago, just before the last hearing.  The order at the time explicitly stated that pickups during non-school days were to happen at each other’s homes and that whoever was picking up was to stay at the car and whoever home it was, was to stay in their home and the child was to go between the house and car with no one else.  This order was made the day she requested a restraining order against herself, hence the very good reason to have a no contact exchange order.  She came to the door.  She called the cops.  My husband gave the cop the order.  The cop told her that she needed to obey it.  She asked the cop how he knew it was a real order.  He asked her for evidence of a more recent one (this one had just been stamped the week before from the court).  She threw a fit.  The cop said “stop acting like a preschooler and go to your car”. 

Part of me wonders if she has been telling my step-son that we are trying to take him away.  Let’s be frank, we don’t want to take him away from his mom.  We do however want him to be safe and unobstructed from us.  I think though she thinks we are taking him away.  Is this a plea to us?  one that says – now I am behaving a little, just a week before the hearing, I don’t want to do Anger Management, that means I have to accept that I am not my anger, but my anger is an emotion, for me though it is my identity, I can’t let it go.  Please, please don’t make me do this to keep my son.  – 

Phone Messages

Drama Mama, some days I just want her to go away.  My husband’s X can’t seem to not have drama in her life.  If my husband won’t give it to her, she will go to other family members, of ours.   We have court again in a little over two weeks.  We received the mediation report the day of our last hears, so other than the court to demand there be supervised exchanges, due to mama drama and the cops being called to the last two exchanges before the last hearing, we had the hearing extended for almost 5 more weeks.  So, as is predictable just before a hearing, she creates drama.  She called my husband’s mom regarding my stepson’s rash that had been on his neck.  My mother-in-law was out of town for the holiday weekend, so we didn’t get any information until this morning, our exchange was Friday.  OK, be it we are intelligent individuals and figured out pretty fast that he had a rash; we had no information on if she had been using medication and if so what that medication was and if it would react w/ anything we would use.  We simply waited a day to apply any medication we had on it. 

I think through this trying to decide why in the world she would want to do this.  There are two things that come to mind, first she MUST have drama and since my husband won’t give it to her by pushing his buttons directly, she is going to find a new way. Second, we have used almost every email and phone call from her since January against her for our court hearings.  It was appropriate for us to do so, she berates my husband and makes calls leading her son to tell his dad that he doesn’t want to spend time with him

. 

It’s amazing to me though, she (I repeat SHE) requested at mediation that we not contact each other’s families unless it is an emergency.  It is the one and only thing on the mediation report that is spelled out as agreed to. 

On another note, I am SO thankful that the exchanges are supervised.  It has dramatically lowered the drama at exchanges and for every 15 minuets she is late she pays them $20.  

Is it ok to be Angry?

I think I am slowly learning that it is ok to be Angry.  In fact I think I am learning that it is only a normal emotion that is right to feel.  It is what I allow myself to be angry with that is important.

Last Friday my husband and I were informed that my younger Step-son’s mom was moving in with her boyfriend, who we will call Meff.  Meff is a shortened name for Meth-head.  Meff has every appearance of being a meth addict, one that has been for quite some time.  To some degree this does not come as a surprise, at least to me.  At my Step-son’s kindergarten graduation we got to meet Meff for the first time, when he came up to my husband and gave him notice of a civil-law-suite for my husband’s Ex, who I will now call Ms. Meff.  When he gave the civil law suit to my husband he tried to say it was a restraining order and then took his hand and crushed it as hard as he could.  Meff and Ms Meff then left.  Later that day we both agreed that, at best case scenario, this guy just got out of rehab.  Later that same day my husband had Mediation.  He said when he came home that at mediation Ms Meff was very confused, for example she could not remember the name of her counselor that she has been seeing weekly for 4 years. . . . hmmm.

I realized last night when I fell in to tears though that the straw that has broken the camel’s back happened the following Friday from Graduation (last Friday).  Ms Meff was, for the first time, going to pick her son up at our house (we have always picked him up at her house or school and dropped him off, if she was supposed to come to us she relinquished her time with him.)  I took my other step-son to the park, pre-seeing a scene he did not need to be a part of.   When she was at the ½ hour late point, my husband texted for us to come home and he would call her to have her come at another time to pick her son up.  As we walked home we saw her vehicle come flying by and make a SUDDEN stop at the stop sign at the corner we were at, as Meff did not recognize myself or my step-son, he went screeching on (Meff was driving, Ms Meff wont for any kind of real distance) as Ms Meff recognized my step-son and waived.  I texted my husband and let him know they were on their way, and that we would take a long rout home to avoid the situation.  As we doddled along we got another text from my husband that said it might be a while and we might want to go somewhere as Ms Meff was calling the cops.  – ah yes, the predicted scene -  so I told my step-son too much.  I am not happy with myself, but out of anger I did it.  I told him that Ms Meff was there and that she was making a scene, so we were going to go to one of his favorite video game stores.   I must confess to we discussed it for a short period of time, I told my step-son I felt sorry for his brother, but I also felt sorry for Ms Meff that she felt she needed to live this life.  My step-son said he felt sorry for his brother.  I continued to be distracted and not a very good step mom at all.  I kind of ½ listened to what my step son was saying as we walked as my mind was pre-occupied with my husband and other step-son.  How unfair is that.  When my husband and I got some time alone I was informed of what happened.  My husband said that Ms Meff showed up and decided to not follow the court order, which explicitly details that she is to wait at the car and call while my husband waits at the door to say good bye.  She came to the door and pounded on it saying she wanted her son.  My husband told her she was to go to her car and he would let their son go between the front door and the car. (probably a good thing to note that we received several threats from Ms Meff directly after our last hearing in April saying she was going to beat my husband up, one in the court room in front of the judge.)  Ms Meff said she wasn’t moving and that she was calling the cops.  My husband than told her to go ahead.  A few min later a cop showed up at the door and asked my husband what was going  on, my husband explained the court order and gave it to him.  The cop told Ms Meff that there was a court order and requested she follow it, after her arguing that it wasn’t a real court order and the cop telling her to stop acting like a preschooler and follow the order she went to her car.  Their son came to the door then and my husband said his good-byes.  Their son then urinated himself as he walked from the house to her car.  Ms Meff then screamed at the police officer that my husband was neglecting their son.  Their son then went back in to the house and changed his pants and returned to his mother.

Am I angry?

Yes.

Am I angry at her?

Yes

What I am desperately trying to learn how to do is separate her actions (sins) from she-herslef.

I am still learning what in the world that means.

I am starting by recognizing this is an individual with and addiction, while I do not know how far her oxycontin addiction has gone (ie. meth, heroin?) What we do know is that she is an addict. We know she has never gone for treatment for her addiction, although she and her mom will say she “is not an addict any more” (that statement, in and of itself, is proof that she has received no treatment, once an addict, always an addict)  Many, if not all at this point, of her actions are driven by that addiction.

 Is she selfish?  yes. So am I.

Now I need to learn to 1) love her as Christ loves her and 2) hate, and be angry with her actions, addictions – but not at her.

God help me. 

Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity,

Or should I say selfishness, selfishness, all is selfishness. . . . . eye for an eye . . . . . taking all of this out of context of course, but I feel like running with it.  I want to be justified in my hate right now.  My husband and I, after fighting with his ex and Child Support Services for quite some time, finally received notification by phone today that YES his ex has been paid  through his Social Security since 2007.  Then to top it off we found out that the amount has been $336 a month MORE than what she is allotted in child support by court.  That part isn’t actually what bothers me, it is that she hasn’t claimed receiving it and has had them take the allotted child support out of my husband’s disability checks!  To be quite frank it pisses me off.  I have the right to be mad too, and the right to express it.  I need to express it, that is only healthy!  What is wrong is that I want her to suffer.  She is very likely to lose custody of her son in the next couple of months to us, it is even possible that she will only get supervised visits.  IF that is what happens it is going to sting for her, she will be losing a GREAT deal of the income she has become dependent on that she is not entitled to.  She may even have to move back in with dear old mommy.   In the end I know that vengeance only hurts me in the long run, but it is a HUGE struggle to not be vengeful.