I have been in serious collective thought throughout the past few weeks and have not written much except the verses that my bible opens to each day. The Holy Bible is living and breathing, whatever message that God wants you to hear will come to you. So I open my bible randomly and start reading on the pages that it opens up to. It always tells me what I need to know for the day to either teach me what I need to learn for the day or to comfort me.
A lot happened over the Christmas Holiday’s. And I needed some time to reflect upon those things and decide what my actions would be and to analyze how I felt about them. I took the boys for a ride so we could talk for a while; I wanted to know from them just what it was that they wanted from me. The conversation was a sad one. I felt so much pain for my little men. For the most part they wanted the fighting to stop, but it was the next part that blew me away. They both decided that they just wanted us all together again. I questioned myself and am still questioning myself on how to deal with that. It is very hard to explain to child that can not possibly understand that is not something that will happen, especially after ten years as well as the fact that I am in a stable, lengthy, healthy marriage. You really have to look deep for the right words to say when something like that is addressed. My reply was that even though mom and dad are not together does not mean that we are not a family. Despite the differences that we share, we are still bound together because of them, and nothing could ever change or would change that fact. I know it was not the answer they were looking for or even if it confused them even more. Is there any good way to say that you will never all live together again as a family unit? If there is I could not think of a way to say it so that it would not hurt them and still can not think of a way to say it either. Despite the moment of being confused as to what to say we had a good time together and ended up at the pet store to purchase some new friends to take home.
The sad part about this entire situation is how I had to get my oldest son. Apparently he is being told a lot of crap, which as we all know is Parent Child Alienation. I have NEVER in all the years since the divorce talked bad to my children about the other parent or family despite what I actually felt and thought of them. You just do not present a child with things like that. So more or less my oldest is being programmed and it is sick and twisted. I will not go into details as to how I had to end up getting him other than it was one of those nasty explosions. The worst part is that even though they tried to demolish his link with me and did so, it was only for a brief time. As soon as he was with me and we were out of range from his alienator he suddenly showed love and affection as he always has.
I see so much pain in the boys, and without me asking they told me why. The explained what their life really is like, and that they can not stand the fights and constant chaos that they live in. They just want it all to end and for life to be normal. I stand true to my word that as long as they are where they are, life will never be normal. Just the week of Christmas, yet again a family member was arrested for a violent act. It leaves a mother in terrible pain when she has to relinquish them back to the situation, you feel powerless and know that at the time all you can do is pray and wait until you can get your next day in court to try and remedy the situation and hope that nothing bad happens in between.
I heard someone say something tonight that made total sense. They were talking about the things that some of non-custodial parents do that is not appeasing to the other parent or family. They were talking about how we hold it all in and when we finally let it out they are shocked, but we do it out of the tremendous pain that we suffer each and every day. I have said it time and time again, and will many more times, there is no instruction book to a divorce, no crystal ball to tell our future, so we never know what were going to go through until we are there.
It is, or it should be hard for any parent when they can not or do not see their children, but it is especially hard on a mom because she bonded with that child nine months before anyone else even knew that child, that child grew in her body, her body nurtured and grew the child, it formed the child and at the end of the nine months she gets to see for the first time the baby that was inside her. There is no other feeling like seeing your baby for the first time and it is like a snapshot etched into your brain for the rest of your life that is something no one can take away. I am not against dad’s here, but just explaining why it is so much harder for a mom.
When I first started this journey of being a non-custodial mom I did not know much at all about it and felt like I was the only one in the world feeling what I feel, but that has changed. I am extremely grateful to the people that I have met along the way that share the same kind of experience. It is really sad that we have to be bound together this way, but I am grateful to know them, to be a shoulder to cry on, to have their shoulder to cry on and to learn together what we can do to improve the lives of our suffering children. Yes we feel immense pain, but the children are the real ones who are suffering and they should not have to.
I truly believe that 2009 will bring about a lot of change, not only for me but for others who are suffering right along with me, but mostly for my precious little men who should not be suffering as they are.
The pictures are proof that you can never take away the love that a mom and her boys share.