It has been almost 2 years since Mike tried to strangle me on the Thanksgiving Monday night… two years of being trapped here – what had felt like, at times, the worst imprisonment imaginable (where I felt like my bond with my kids was threatened all the time – fighting for stability as a family) to some days more like a gilded cage. However severe the feeling was – it was still captivity. I was stuck on a 50km tether to that man. Trapped. It was the most debilitating emotion, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to adequately explain how I felt like I was struggling for breath – from both that fateful night, to the months and months that followed.
But now he has left. Off to Ontario, to a job his company created for him, so he could be closer to his girlfriend. So I can move if I wanted to, but now I have created a life here of my very own. Life is a funny, funny thing, my friends.
I used to dream about how we’d escape. We would go to my friend Ginny’s house and park the van in the garage, and then drive. Changing licence plates in every province at malls – mixing a bunch up so it would take them longer to find us. I would dream about living in a refuge in a church in some dusty hot South American village, my kids all half naked and dirty, brown as little beans and speaking the native tongue better than me. I imagined we were being protected my the church, and hiding away if people came looking. I cried thinking about missing my family, even though the stupid thing was all in my head. I was a desperate woman. Scared, angry, forced to stay, knowing he and his family were just waiting for me to fuck up.
I didn’t. I survived. Hell, I have even done well.
He said to me, “You failed as a business owner, you failed as a wife, and you’ll fail as a mother…”
The things that stay with you…
His mother took my eldest out to lunch and told him that she and his Dad’s family would communicate through him. He’s fucking 8. I found this out because he was a mess when I picked them up – agitated, upset, snappy. We talked. He told me what she said – that I was a bad communicator that couldn’t be trusted to keep them in contact. That there was a risk I wouldn’t let them see each other.
My immediate reaction was A) I wanted to throw up B) I wanted to tell him that there is no middle/sides or whatever – everyone loves him C) Tell my ex-mother in law what a deeply stupid fucking thing that is to do to an 8 year old. It’s just EVIL.
I skipped throwing up and comforted my son. I told him no grown up should ever make him feel like he has to get between grown ups, and grown up issues. I said, “If I *ever* make you feel like that, you need to say to me ‘Mumma, this is making me feel uncomfortable and put in the middle.’ and that goes for Daddy, and Granny and Gramps too. No one should ever make you feel that way baby. Grown ups need to act like grown ups.” We had a really good talk. I listened a lot. I heard a lot of stuff that had been said that made my blood boil, but I kept a straight face, and made no protests. And hugged and kissed him as much as I could.
When I had some quiet time, I called my ex-mother-in-law and very, very pleasantly told her she could talk to me, and never to put Thomas into that role of communicator, letting her know it really stressed him out. I didn’t pass judgement on her. I didn’t give her shit of any kind. I simply laid down the god damned law. In a friendly way. Nobody messes with my kids. Good intentions paving the way to hell and all that, also paving the way for him right into therapy. Just talking to him and hearing some of it, I know their talk has hurt him more deeply than I may ever know.
Divorce is an ugly business – I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
But now the seatbelt sign has turned off, and I am free to move about. If I want to. I can. And that makes all the difference.