witzend
Well-Known Member
I wanted to say thank you to you all for all of your good thoughts and advice the past few days. Having a day to myself yesterday was a blessing. I wasn't busy trying to hide everything from husband and was able to process unfiltered what's been going on.
So, I did talk to husband last night about a lot of things. I started out by telling him that I had made the appointment for therapy and that I was going to try a new type of therapy for me. I didn't get into great detail as to what the therapy was, but that it would take a lot of work at home on it from me and that I hoped that I would finally be able to move myself away from my troubles in my heart.
We also talked some about perceptions of what has happened in our lives with L. There had been so many situations that I was triangulated on by her dad, Rich, and her late stepmom, Jane. Years after Rich divorced Jane he told me that he had filed for divorce because he couldn't stand how badly she treated me anymore. Well, I never believed that. He was with her full bore all six times she tried to terminate my visitation rights. In fact as L's only custodial parent he could have stopped it each and every time, because Jane was clearly the instigator in each one. And I never knew what it was that would precipitate those things. They just came out of nowhere, and I assumed that it was whenever she caught him cheating on her that she took it out on me. The worst one (when I was 7 months pregnant with M and they accused me of molesting L) was when it seemed to Jane that L and I were on track to a normal visitation schedule - the papers were to be signed the next day. But I digress.
I've seen their divorce papers. Years earlier Jane (who was a Deputy DA in the CPS Dept.) had begun making an argument in court that she had standing because she was L's "psychological mother". It got her a seat at the table and allowed her to not be excluded from the hearings. Their "expert", Dr. Charlene (L's 'mother of the bride'), was the instigator on this, and they were attempting to write new law as to non-birth parents gaining custody over birth parents by having this term 'psychological parent' recognized as equal with 'biological parent'. They were quite ambitious… I always made sure that Dr. Charlene testified that I was also L's psychological mother. The divorce papers throughout were what you would expect of two people of independent means with children to parse out for visits. Their daughter S was referred to as their daughter, and they referred to L several times by saying that Rich was her 'biological' father and Jane was her 'psychological mother'. Then a handwritten note was inserted every place it said that corrected to say 'one of L's psychological mothers'. Obviously, Jane intended to take L away from Rich after their divorce by removing my standing as a parent to her in their divorce papers.
We never heard this 'I divorced Jane because she was so awful to you and wouldn't stop' story until about 10 years after the divorce and at least 6 years after Jane died. BS on that. He was terrified that she was going to do him like she did me, and he knew he would never have been able to get through that type of abuse. She would have ruined his career if she could have. Of course, they both had enough dirt on each other from the dirty tricks and lies they played on me " a lawyer who lies under oath will not keep their license, period " to have buried each other, and I would have sued them both blind if they aired their dirty laundry. So I guess it became like a Mexican Standoff.
husband and I are both of the opinion that Jane just plain hated me, and that she hated most everyone. I was an easy target. The truth was always that if she had ever just left me alone I would have come to a peace with not having custody of L. Instead she kept making these outrageous allegations of abuse against me. Who in their right mind is going to walk away because someone said you molested your child when you didn't? The lovely 2 years of supervised visits that I suffered through after that were hardly worth it, but when you fight so hard and all you get is their personal friend the judge saying, 'Well if Dr. Charlene says it happened, it probably did'. No charges, mind you, just allegations in family court where the standard of proof is that you need to wake the judge up from his drunken stupor long enough to sign the papers. So, if you want to get rid of someone, why keep 'poking the bear'? It was torture, plain and simple. I honestly think that she would have been happiest if I had killed myself.
The other key thing about what happened throughout Lauren's life, from the day when she was a week old and Rich changed her name on the birth certificate without telling me, to the incident that got my family so angry with me, is that they always told L that they or she should lie to me because 'otherwise your mom will be upset'. Well, no one ever once got to know how I would react to the truth because no one ever once told me the truth about anything. L's husband is a man that she met 4 months before they were married. He was under the impression that she is getting a teaching degree and has experience with "Special Education". I'm sure he has no clue that she's never held a job, her dad put her in foster care for a year when she was 16 and then paid her rent and gave her spending money for the next 8 years so he wouldn't have to let her live with him, that she didn't graduate HS, or that she got caught giving her 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] fiance's best friend a HJ out in the car in front of their house two years ago and demand that he give her his house as a 'palimony settlement' because he grabbed by the arm to get her off his friend. And so, so, so much more. She didn't want me to tell him anything, so she had to distance herself from me, as though I had no knowledge or history with her. It's the only thing that makes sense. It fits right in with 'Just don't tell… they'll be upset…'
Anyway, husband and I got a lot talked about that we hadn't talked about before, or at least in some time. I'm still raw, but not nearly to the bone as I was over the weekend. I'm ready to put the effort into the therapy to try to put this behind me once and for all. I can only be happy if I stop reacting like a victim to this. Of course I was a victim, but I'm not anymore and I shouldn't feel like one. Now I just have to learn how.
I'm really grateful to you all for your support. Most of us old timers here on PE know each other's stories by heart, but sometimes they do get intermingled. I've been here for 10 years now and realize that probably a lot of what I say doesn't make sense to some who haven't heard the story before. I hope that some of what I wrote today helps makes sense, and I'll probably journal some of this stuff as a way of putting it away. If I write it, maybe I don't have to think it once it's all typed out. I had made the decision to try CBT a month or so back when someone had mentioned it, but it was this last weekend that made me finally get off my hoo-haw and get it scheduled. I feel that I need to give it a year at least. One year's hard work to end 30 years of pain seems like quite a good deal when you think about it. I hope that I will like the Psy. D. Even if I don't, I will be objective as to whether or not she is any good and can help me. Talk therapy isn't going to cut it anymore. No one here knows me. There's no way she can possibly have heard about anyone in this matter other than me let alone have loyalties or business dealings with any of them, which was a great struggle with finding therapists back home. It is four weeks, and that seems like a long time to wait. But, I'm going to do my best to stay away from reminders and making decisions about anything at least until then.
So, I did talk to husband last night about a lot of things. I started out by telling him that I had made the appointment for therapy and that I was going to try a new type of therapy for me. I didn't get into great detail as to what the therapy was, but that it would take a lot of work at home on it from me and that I hoped that I would finally be able to move myself away from my troubles in my heart.
We also talked some about perceptions of what has happened in our lives with L. There had been so many situations that I was triangulated on by her dad, Rich, and her late stepmom, Jane. Years after Rich divorced Jane he told me that he had filed for divorce because he couldn't stand how badly she treated me anymore. Well, I never believed that. He was with her full bore all six times she tried to terminate my visitation rights. In fact as L's only custodial parent he could have stopped it each and every time, because Jane was clearly the instigator in each one. And I never knew what it was that would precipitate those things. They just came out of nowhere, and I assumed that it was whenever she caught him cheating on her that she took it out on me. The worst one (when I was 7 months pregnant with M and they accused me of molesting L) was when it seemed to Jane that L and I were on track to a normal visitation schedule - the papers were to be signed the next day. But I digress.
I've seen their divorce papers. Years earlier Jane (who was a Deputy DA in the CPS Dept.) had begun making an argument in court that she had standing because she was L's "psychological mother". It got her a seat at the table and allowed her to not be excluded from the hearings. Their "expert", Dr. Charlene (L's 'mother of the bride'), was the instigator on this, and they were attempting to write new law as to non-birth parents gaining custody over birth parents by having this term 'psychological parent' recognized as equal with 'biological parent'. They were quite ambitious… I always made sure that Dr. Charlene testified that I was also L's psychological mother. The divorce papers throughout were what you would expect of two people of independent means with children to parse out for visits. Their daughter S was referred to as their daughter, and they referred to L several times by saying that Rich was her 'biological' father and Jane was her 'psychological mother'. Then a handwritten note was inserted every place it said that corrected to say 'one of L's psychological mothers'. Obviously, Jane intended to take L away from Rich after their divorce by removing my standing as a parent to her in their divorce papers.
We never heard this 'I divorced Jane because she was so awful to you and wouldn't stop' story until about 10 years after the divorce and at least 6 years after Jane died. BS on that. He was terrified that she was going to do him like she did me, and he knew he would never have been able to get through that type of abuse. She would have ruined his career if she could have. Of course, they both had enough dirt on each other from the dirty tricks and lies they played on me " a lawyer who lies under oath will not keep their license, period " to have buried each other, and I would have sued them both blind if they aired their dirty laundry. So I guess it became like a Mexican Standoff.
husband and I are both of the opinion that Jane just plain hated me, and that she hated most everyone. I was an easy target. The truth was always that if she had ever just left me alone I would have come to a peace with not having custody of L. Instead she kept making these outrageous allegations of abuse against me. Who in their right mind is going to walk away because someone said you molested your child when you didn't? The lovely 2 years of supervised visits that I suffered through after that were hardly worth it, but when you fight so hard and all you get is their personal friend the judge saying, 'Well if Dr. Charlene says it happened, it probably did'. No charges, mind you, just allegations in family court where the standard of proof is that you need to wake the judge up from his drunken stupor long enough to sign the papers. So, if you want to get rid of someone, why keep 'poking the bear'? It was torture, plain and simple. I honestly think that she would have been happiest if I had killed myself.
The other key thing about what happened throughout Lauren's life, from the day when she was a week old and Rich changed her name on the birth certificate without telling me, to the incident that got my family so angry with me, is that they always told L that they or she should lie to me because 'otherwise your mom will be upset'. Well, no one ever once got to know how I would react to the truth because no one ever once told me the truth about anything. L's husband is a man that she met 4 months before they were married. He was under the impression that she is getting a teaching degree and has experience with "Special Education". I'm sure he has no clue that she's never held a job, her dad put her in foster care for a year when she was 16 and then paid her rent and gave her spending money for the next 8 years so he wouldn't have to let her live with him, that she didn't graduate HS, or that she got caught giving her 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] fiance's best friend a HJ out in the car in front of their house two years ago and demand that he give her his house as a 'palimony settlement' because he grabbed by the arm to get her off his friend. And so, so, so much more. She didn't want me to tell him anything, so she had to distance herself from me, as though I had no knowledge or history with her. It's the only thing that makes sense. It fits right in with 'Just don't tell… they'll be upset…'
Anyway, husband and I got a lot talked about that we hadn't talked about before, or at least in some time. I'm still raw, but not nearly to the bone as I was over the weekend. I'm ready to put the effort into the therapy to try to put this behind me once and for all. I can only be happy if I stop reacting like a victim to this. Of course I was a victim, but I'm not anymore and I shouldn't feel like one. Now I just have to learn how.
I'm really grateful to you all for your support. Most of us old timers here on PE know each other's stories by heart, but sometimes they do get intermingled. I've been here for 10 years now and realize that probably a lot of what I say doesn't make sense to some who haven't heard the story before. I hope that some of what I wrote today helps makes sense, and I'll probably journal some of this stuff as a way of putting it away. If I write it, maybe I don't have to think it once it's all typed out. I had made the decision to try CBT a month or so back when someone had mentioned it, but it was this last weekend that made me finally get off my hoo-haw and get it scheduled. I feel that I need to give it a year at least. One year's hard work to end 30 years of pain seems like quite a good deal when you think about it. I hope that I will like the Psy. D. Even if I don't, I will be objective as to whether or not she is any good and can help me. Talk therapy isn't going to cut it anymore. No one here knows me. There's no way she can possibly have heard about anyone in this matter other than me let alone have loyalties or business dealings with any of them, which was a great struggle with finding therapists back home. It is four weeks, and that seems like a long time to wait. But, I'm going to do my best to stay away from reminders and making decisions about anything at least until then.
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