No matter how hard I try to prepare myself for the meltdowns, they always hit my heart so deeply. The kids came home tonight and I knew there would be crying and meltdowns as before. My son flew into my arms and cuddled right in and asked for nummies and bed. The girls' began crying, and I soothed them with hugs and told them to get into their jammies while I got their brother to bed.
As they shut the door, they told their dad that they would see him in two days. I almost stopped dead in my tracks, but instead decided to act as if I had no response. I shut the door and ushered them down the hall to their bedrooms and went and got my son into bed. I then went and crawled into bed with the girls and got some snuggle time in, hugs usually make everything better in this house.
They told me about their time with dad, all the places he'd taken them and the stuff he'd bought them and then how they had portraits taken by a friend and took over 89 pictures. This admittedly is a sore spot for me. The ex pulled the same hook the last time we separated and actually conned my sister into blowing up and framing dozens of pictures for the ex'es new place. I kept them all as he left them behind and has never once asked for a single picture. I admit, at times it floors me that he is stubbornly asking for his dad's stuff and yet has never once asked for baby pictures of our children or any pictures of them AT ALL! And so, in typical Ex fashion, he is creating a new life, with new memories and erasing all the rest. Nothing will exist in his house that reminds him or is a part of his life before he left.
Then we got on to the subject of the whole "see you in two days". My oldest said, "Mommy I wish that we could see you and daddy at the same time so we don't have to miss either of you". I listened and said, "Oh yeah?" completely non committal as I am 99% sure those were words put into her head by his mouth. With how much we use to fight I can guarantee the kids do not want him anywhere near me and have stated as much. My oldest followed it up with how daddy didn't know they had no school on monday and they wanted to see him and he had promised that he would.
Insert exploding head here. I already know the answers to the following questions, but it doesn't stop them from coursing through my head at the speed of light. WHEN will the adult be the adult in this situation and STOP acting like a child? WHEN will he stop thinking about what he wants, and remember there are 3 innocent children involved in this? HOW hard is it to get and maintain the therapy that is court ordered in our stipulation for him to continue that he has in fact, stopped? WHY can he not follow the simple requests I have made that directly correlate to the well being of our children? AND why does he have to be so off his rocker and manipulative with a 8, 6 and 2 year old???
Much better to get those off my chest, despite knowing the answer to all of the above. Sometimes I want to hit my head against a wall. I feel as if I am facing this liar that no one can see through. And then I remember, my family see's it, the courts began to see through it and other people who have been in the Ex'es life have seen who he really is. I did call him, don't know why i bothered. Pretty sure he recorded the phone call, though he didn't let me know so it's pointless. But i asked him why he would tell the children something that is outside of the agreement that he himself made, and his response was, "I want to see the kids more and they want to see more of me too. You promised me you would never with hold the children from me, J and you are!" Insert big breath here. I had to remind him that I am not with holding the children, in fact I am keeping a schedule and routine for them. How and why would i put the kids around him MORE when he can't even maintain therapy and missed 6 weeks at a time of visitation? He is court mandated to have 11%, he's only showing up for about 5%. As a friend reminded me, that's a big fat F for failure at that rate. He's not even hitting HALF of his visitation time!! And so I told him that I was not changing the schedule, it was what he had agreed to and he was not in line with the rest of the stipulation and that I would not allow him to continue trying to peg me with parent alienation (loads of NPD's play the victim to the tune of parent alienation) as I allowed him to call whenever the kids wanted to speak with him and i've given him extra time in the past. He ended the phone call asking me if i'd only called to "Jam him up" and hung up on me.
It all just saddens my heart. He can't even see how unhealthy and unstable he is (this morning emailing me about how great the kids are doing and thanking me for our children and saying how grateful he was to me for our great kids) to trying to manipulate those great kids, further confuse them and make them unsure of who to trust. Way to go Ex, that's an A+ for . . . . selfishness. Sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment