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

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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.