[Disclaimer for this post: My sins post? It will totally be up tomorrow. Seriously. I'm going to write about sloths. I'm not sure about how-many-toed sloths, yet. But there will be sloth.
[Miscellaneous note: If you know whose birthday it is today, go wish her a happy one. She doesn't want any big deal made about it, apparently, but I still think it's important to say something like 'Holy shit, you're 29 freaking years old. Let's get drunk!' You may paraphrase, at your discretion.]
A week’s gone by with Isobel seeing her daddy again. Five visits. Unobserved by me and held secretive by him. All of them, he showed up, refused to speak to me, returned her, refused to speak to me and left to the minute. He put on his shoes and he dragged out goodbyes so that she was upset and then as soon as he was out the door, she was over it. Like he’d not even been here. It’s kind of spooky, really.
She didn’t ask for him during the three and a half weeks she didn’t see him. Not once. If I mentioned him, it was merely acknowledged by her and moved on from. And part of the conversation we grown ups and lawyers had was that these visits were not his visits with her, they were her visits with him.
I don’t know if you see the difference, but I see a huge one. Before, it was his right to see her. Now, it seems as though she has a right to see him, but she doesn’t have the need yet. Case in point:
Yesterday, the day after she had a visit with him wherein she was returned with two bruises, a gashed knee, a poop-covered diaper area (but clean diaper. Get it, clean up was minimal.), a rash from MSG-infused food and a sunburn? I mentioned to her that she could go on a big, scary, claustrophobia-inducing slide with him and she said, “No. No Daddy. Daddy owie,” as she pointed to her knee.
I thought she was a little young to play the blame game, but apparently, her being a dare-devil freak and bailing and getting an owie was his fault.
But, I know that one day, I know I’ll probably hear, “I wish I lived with Daddy,” followed by, “I hate you,” and a door slamming. Or something to that effect.
Trust me, I’m bracing myself for that, already, and coming up with feasible responses, should one be required, that is in no form of the shit-talking variety. That will be one of the hardest things I will have to deal with over the years – explaining, but not; referencing, sort of; being vague enough, but not, so that more whys don’t come into her head; finding a way to one day explain to her in a mature, adult way that it has nothing to do with her, but that her dad today wants to be an alcoholic more than he wants to be a dad sometimes.
And see, here’s the deal. I knew I’d be a single parent one day. Sure, I imagined weddings and fences and the whole Jones lot – but I grew up with one parent there, and it seemed natural to me. I guess part of me, from a young age, also recognized my inability to play nice with others, or conversely, a propensity to pick the ones that don’t play nice with me.
I wanted to be a mommy. I wanted to have at least one kiddo and pour my everything into them while letting them be their own everything. I wanted to guide, not teach; follow and lead; not be a friend, but have the openness of a friendship. I’m well on my way, I think, most days. And this visitation thing is another mental roadblock I’ve gotta dodge around, to get to the other side.
Because it’s effing up our lives right now. She’s not getting her full napping in because on the nights that he’s got her during the week, if she’s even willing to take a nap, we still have to accomplish a day’s worth of stuff before 5pm. Normally, we could go out after dinner if anything on the to do list didn’t get done. But not on Tuesdays or Thursdays now. Then she comes back home and she’s all revved up and her diaper is soaking through to her clothess and I don’t know if/when/what she’s been fed because he will not speak to me if he doesn’t have to.
See, he’s very mad at me; he’s apparently got a lot of things to be mad at me for and those things are so severe that visitation cannot take place anywhere around me, I am not privy to their details and oh, yeah, I get to hear every day, “I don’t really want to speak to you.” I also have no idea where he lives, how to call him or even get in touch unless by email. It’s none of my business, apparently, I think.
It’s making it hard to deal with on an emotional level. And when he took her for all of the hours between nap and bedtime on Saturday, I was like, “Oh My Freaking God! What could be happening right now? Is she okay?” And that is the grossest feeling I’ve had to date about him. That he might do whatever he wanted to do because he might feel like he needed to.
I’ve always thought that. I’ve always worried that. But there’s always been measured controls in place so that regardless, I was there. It didn’t matter, anything could happen, and I would be there. Now, there’s no controls. I’m not there, and I don’t even know where there is.
I’m supposed to trust this person who went home the night after our daughter was born and smoked a joint and had a beer before bringing back diapers. The person who five weeks ago, drank the rest of my Smirnoff Ice, his bottle of wine and some beers, and smoked a joint while being alone with Isobel, while I was in the hospital after I passed out. The person who said to my lawyer a week ago, “no problem” about not drinking during or before visits – when that was what the problem has almost always been about, ultimately.
I don’t think I can do that.
I know this is fresh. I know it might come, the trust. But I also know that I might never lose the wary feeling of expecting him to fuck it up and to hold me responsible for his lack of choice in legal matters when/if he does. And I know that if I do trust him again, and he does go ahead and go back to the usual tricks, I will blame myself mostly.
Cycles be damned, I literally can’t do much here to stop any descent that might happen. And lack of control is one thing – it will drive me batty, to start with – but complete impotence is something much more severe. And I cannot get this swishing feeling out of my stomach.
