On Drawing the Line

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I did something today that I’ve never done before. When JDawg showed up for his visit after a night of obviously heavy drinking, I said he needed to leave.

I could smell him the moment he walked in the door and the non-discreet way that he popped some gum into his mouth didn’t help his case. Knowing that there is a clause to his visitation rights, he chose to spend the evening getting what my olfactory glands can only assume was smashed.

He didn’t seem drunk, but he didn’t seem sober either. Looking into his red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes, I could tell that it hadn’t been 12 hours. And when I asked if he’d been drinking late, because I could smell the booze, he admitted he had. But he wouldn’t tell me when he stopped drinking, just that it was late.

And when he started yelling at me, when I challenged why, yet again, he would put his visit with her as a second priority over a party with his sometimes on, sometimes off friends, I could tell that he wasn’t in a sober state of mind.

He said he wasn’t drunk; wasn’t even hungover. Kudos to him I suppose, since the amount of alcohol coming off of him was enough to potentially give me a contact high.

Since we signed our agreement and I had it filed with the court system of BC, I’ve never fulfilled my responsibility to cancel a visit if he was in less-than-sober form, for a multitude of reasons. It was easier to not fight and guilt-trip him over it; and some of those times when he had shown up (or still been here) inebriated, I was in love with him, or had had a few drinks with him the night before, or I just chalked it up to he has a problem and can’t control himself.

I am Zoeyjane’s co-dependance.

I took, for so many years, his drinking as a sign of me not being good enough and my problem with it, a sign of not being understanding enough. Hell, being told again and again, over and over that my love or lack thereof was a cause of it, really led me to the belief that I shouldn’t argue it. I still did, and often, but I felt that I had no right to, really, since I was both the cause of and solution to all of his life’s problems. Any negative reaction I threw his way, I felt nearly immediately guilty and selfish for  – because obviously I was just being insensitive and resentful, and he can’t control himself because he’s sick, right?

Wrong.

Today, after being yelled at and sternly spoken to and disrespected on almost every plain possible, I doled out a speech after telling him that I thought he should say good-bye to Isobel and leave.

Amazingly, he refrained from the usual insinuations that I was a slut who’d ruined his life, directly calling me a bitch or cunt, and critiquing what lack luster mothering I give. He did tell me about how I should get a real job so that I understand how hard he has to work his ass off, how I shouldn’t be allowed to drink either (because we all know how often I black out, or you know, have more than one drink in a given week’s time), and about how I control everything and always have and always will.

The speech I gave?

Highlighted, in bold-faced tones, with italics and exclamation points, that he was an adult, and had made a choice to go against the court-ordered agreement he’d signed that stated he would not drink for 12 hours prior to, or during, a visit. That his ignorance of that agreement was finished, regardless of how many times in the past I’d been the person sitting across from him at the brunch table with Isobel, when he’d asked if he could have a beer and I’d been emotionally powerless to say no.

That he had chosen to disregard these rules he’d helped make, knowing that it would put his visitation in jeopardy. That this was not the first time it had happened in her life, that I was not to blame for his choices and that I wasn’t going to play the game of ‘blame Zoeyjane’ anymore.

I reminded him, not sensitively but not insultingly, that his visitation had been stripped on more than one occasion in the past for calling ’sick’ multiple times when he was supposed to see her. That a parent doesn’t say one day how much he misses his kid, the next week that he’s owed a day off of visitation and the next, go drinking the night before.

And do you know what he did?

The parent of the year seethed for a few minutes, told his daughter that he loved her and then that he had to leave because he was getting very angry.

And do you know what his daughter did? She got sad and she said “sowwee, otay,” and she looked at the floor. Then he walked out the door, saying goodbye to her as he strutted away and he never corrected his major error.

I was left to explain to her that Daddy didn’t mean he was getting angry with her, that she didn’t need to apologize for anything. While she fucking cried. I had to say that because Daddy was supposed to do something and he hadn’t, that meant that he couldn’t play. Just like how if she wasn’t being nice, was doing something she knew she wasn’t supposed to, she wouldn’t be allowed to play, either. And that she’d see him soon, next weekend. I had to draw a parallel for her between her hitting a friend and him choosing for the zillionth time in her life to get drunk. Without explaining more than she needs to know, at two and a fucking half years old.

I had to make it all better for her, for him.

So today, I drew a line with JDawg – no longer would I be afraid of his reaction or his unwillingness to like me because of my willingness to hold him accountable for actions he’s not willing to take responsibility for.

And today, I realized what I really am afraid of: having to ever again or always explain to my daughter that her father’s problem is not her own.

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