Truth hurts

It takes a lot to accept that a fundamental decision in your life was a bad one. It's hard to admit it, that your judgment was so off.

You want to think that you chose well. Because if you're wrong, you were so, so wrong. You failed so utterly.

So you suffer through years of gas-lighting, being made to feel like you're crazy for being outraged that your children are suffering and so unhappy because he is incapable of taking their needs into account. You protect them as much as you can, to the point of calling DHS on one occasion when he gets a little too rough with the boy.

As he drags them from house to house and woman to woman, you are the rock. You maintain the stability they need - your house is the same, your temperament is the same, your rules are the same, your love is the same. You don't introduce them to any romantic interests.

In particular, the boy suffers. The first post-divorce wife is a fucking monster and awful to the children. When they break up, he's alone for a little while, but he is incapable of being alone, so he starts dating a new woman and marries her within about 8 or 9 months. She's a nice person, but she has 4 kids, meaning the children are moving into a household with 5 new people, only some of whom they like.

Imagine that for a minute. You're young and heading into puberty, with all of the craziness that entails. Over the past few years, your life with your father has been turbulent. It has been exhausting and occasionally traumatic. You're a bit of an introvert, like your mother. And now you have to move into a house with a new step-mother and four new step-brothers. The step-mother also has an after-school childcare business, so the house is constantly crowded and noisy. You alternate weeks between the chaos of the new situation and the quiet and calm of your mother's house.

The very thought of it makes your chest tighten with anxiety. Predictably, the boy doesn't deal with it well, and his behavior at his father's house shows it. He is miserable, and makes everyone else in the house miserable as well.

Rather than recognize the source of the boy's behavior and unhappiness, or to understand that the boy is 12 and prepubescent and thus essentially clinically insane, his father informs you that the boy is a cancer and an asshole and a cunt (sorry - his word, not mine), and that he is no longer welcome in his house.

So it is agreed that it's best for everyone if the boy comes to live with you, where he can have one place that's home with the one parent who feels like home. When things calm down, maybe he will spend occasional weekends with his father so that you can take a trip or get some downtime.

Also, the boy is unhappy at his middle school - it's just not a good fit. So you arrange for him to switch to a different school with a better system of instruction, a better curriculum, and better teachers. When he starts the new semester there, he is immediately ecstatic. He loves school, always wants to talk about what he's learning, wakes up every morning chirpy and with a spring in his step.

Things are sorted. You've got the carpool situation locked down.  You've got an upcoming business trip and some girls' weekends coming up, and it is agreed that the boy will stay with his father for a couple of nights.

Things have gone from anxious and tumultuous to organized and calm. The boy is happy, so you are happy.

On Friday night, you head off on your girls' ski weekend in the mountains feeling confident that the boy will be OK with his dad for a weekend. They're going skiing and all seems to be well. You're looking forward to connecting with friends and skiing a mountain that you don't know very well.

But then you are awakened at 6:15 yesterday morning by a phone call. It looks to be from the father's wife, but when you pick up, it is the boy. He is crying.

He was dawdling and difficult when told he needed to get up and get ready to leave. Traffic to the mountains on a Saturday morning is a nightmare, so if you want to minimize the agony, you need to leave by 6 at the latest, and preferably a little earlier. Missing that 15 minute window can literally add an hour to the trip, so time is of the essence.

With a carload of people up and ready to go, the boy petulantly said, "just leave without me." So they did. I kind of get that part of it. But they also take his phone. Just to be a dickish and punitive. Just to pile on.

Again, imagine that for a minute. A 12 year old boy is left alone in the house with both parents out of town. His means of communication is taken away. Word is not left with a neighbor or a friend that he's on his own, to keep an eye out just in case. If there's an emergency, no one can get in touch with him. If there is an emergency on his end, he's left to fend for himself.

He remembers that the Amazon Echo is hooked up to the step-mother's phone contacts, so that is how he manages to reach you.

You could try to get someone to go get him, but you can't call him to give him a head's up. Nonetheless, a friend generously agrees to go check on him and take him home, but when he knocks on the door nobody answers - the boy went back to sleep and didn't hear anything.

The boy needs you. There's nothing to do but go back to Denver.

On the way, you call and ask what happened.

"He was being a jerk and holding everybody up, so we left him."

"But why did you take his phone? Aren't you concerned about what could happen if there's an emergency and he can't call anyone and no one can call him?"

He laughs and says, "I guess not," which just about sends you into orbit.

You're quiet for a second and then ask, "don't you care about what happens to him? Don't you love him?"

"Not really," he responds.

"How can you say that about your son?" you ask.

"You don't know what he's like," he says.

So there it is. He's a father who isn't interested in being a father when things are difficult or inconvenient. His love, to the extent he is capable of it, is conditional. He seems unconcerned with his son's safety. He doesn't understand that being a good parent means gutting it out when adolescents act like normal adolescents - i.e., assholes.

You pick up the boy. You take all of his things and all of his clothes. The poster of the earth viewed from the surface of the moon - a gift that his grandfather bought him at the Air & Space Museum - is removed from the wall and brought home.

Everything has come very clearly into focus. Because you didn't want to accept that you failed, you have spent years trying and trying and trying again to repair the relationship, to keep lines of communication open, to get them into therapy to work out their differences. The parent-child relationship is so important. Boys need their fathers. Blah blah blah.

You have tried to talk yourself into believing that his horrible abusive childhood left him somewhat emotionally stunted and not good at resolving conflict, but that deep down, he's a good person. A good father. That your kids are OK with him.

But you realize that you are beating your head against the wall. You are the only one making the effort. You are Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

The truth is, he's a terrible person and a terrible father. Your son is not OK with him. You did choose badly. You did fail.

That realization is heartbreaking, but also liberating. Your path forward is clear. You now know that there's no point in trying to force him to be someone he's not capable of being.

The boy has you, and that will be enough.

It's been a hell of a time

I've been thinking for a while about what I'm going to do with this blog. I've been writing it for 13 1/2 years. It's been a record of my life and my thoughts for a long time. It chronicled my marriage. I've written about my kids since they were born.

But my kids are now at an age when I don't feel like their stories are mine to tell. Stories about Zeke flirting shamelessly with my friends were adorable when he wasn't even two. But it's not fair to talk about his flirting habits now, when he's 12 and in the throes of middle school drama. When anything and everything is embarrassing.

Suffice it to say that middle school girls are a fucking nightmare. I feel like I can say this, having been one once.

Josie isn't quite at the point of being mortified by discussion of her life's foibles, but I still think that she's entitled to her privacy.

As for me, I've always felt like an open book, but it's hard to write about certain aspects of my life when this is not an anonymous blog. People who read this know who I am. I work for a government entity that is highly political. I've written what I thought were incredibly innocuous posts and gotten snarky pushback from individuals in the community where I work.

But then I was recently chatting with a colleague who I don't know very well, and she said, "I've been reading your blog! I really love it. I love your voice. I love the way you write. You're funny."

I was flattered and encouraged. We talked a little bit about writing - she's a blogger too - and I lamented that I was feeling bottled up because the things that I have always written about - my relationships, my kids, funny stories involving foul language - feel off-limits for one reason or another. She understood, but told me I should write anyway.

So I will keep writing. I want to write more. I find it therapeutic.

There have been all kinds of things buzzing around in my brain lately - I've been dealing with a lot of shit, much of it of the deja-vu-all-over-again variety. But in the dawn of a new decade, it feels like a good time to do a little retrospective. I was thinking about it and then Lisa did one and now I'm inspired to do my own. (Love you, Lis! xoxo)

The decade got off to a rough start. And looking back, it never really got better. It's been a hard ten years.

At the start of 2010, I had a newborn baby and a toddler, a husband who was working out of town during the week, a job that I hated, and we were broke from the housing crash and the move from Hawaii. Jason got pneumonia in January. Emma had her awful accident in March. We managed to buy our house (now my house) before the short sale on the Hawaii house trashed our credit for a few years. I changed jobs in November. I was constantly exhausted and feeling like I was hanging on by a weak thread. But there was a big bright spot - I went to an India reunion and reconnected with all of my old friends, most of whom I hadn't seen in at least 15 or 20 years. It was magical.

Things felt somewhat calmer and more normalized in 2011, though I was still a single parent during the week and feeling generally overwhelmed. There were some bright spots - I started skiing more and grew to really love it. Emma got better.

In 2012 and 2013 we started to explore Colorado more. We did some camping, which the kids loved, especially when it involved me getting a speeding ticket.

But I was sinking into depression because I was so unhappy in my marriage. So, so unhappy. I was miserable and not taking good care of myself and even had a scare when I thought I had brain cancer (it turned out to be silent migraines).

The true annus horribilis was, obviously, 2014. The worst year of my life, no question. It started with the decision that Jason and I made to split up, which was good on one hand because it needed to happen, but for financial reasons we needed to continue living together for a while. At first it was sort of fine, but then it really wasn't. When he started being overtly mean to me and trashing me in front of my family at the beach vacation that my parents had paid for him to attend, my mother told him to cut the shit. I told him it was time to move out.

And then less than a month later, Emma was dead. Even now, five years later, it still feels like a punch to the gut every time I think about it.

2015 is a fog. I wavered between despondency and depression, and feeling like I was learning how to live again. I went to another great India reunion, which made me happy. I was walking to work every morning, which was life-affirming and restorative. We went to Iceland, which was really cool. But I still frequently felt bombarded by grief and overwhelmed by loneliness.

The years since have been more of the same - crazy awfulness mixed in with some triumphs, but mostly mundane bullshit.

Lori died in 2016. So did her sister.

My kids, particularly Zeke, have struggled post-divorce.

Things haven't been all terrible, or even mostly terrible in a day-to-day sense. I was talking to my friend Jen a couple of weeks ago and as part of the "how have you been how's life treating you" conversation, she said something that stuck with me: "oh, you know. Mostly muddling through, with occasional moments of joy. You know how it is."

I do know how it is. And I have had some moments of joy, including some borne of sadness. I started climbing 14ers on the anniversary of Emma's death, first for her, and then for others. I've done some traveling, including Italy in 2017 and a wonderful trip to India with Lisa this past July. I adore my reunions and time reconnecting with old friends. I got a new job that I love. I love skiing and hiking and enjoying where I live. Trips to the beach with my family, whom I love and from whom I draw so much strength. Days in the sun and on the mountain. My children, who get more wonderful and interesting each day.

But looking back over the past ten years, I realize that I have spent a decade feeling like I'm under siege, going from crisis to crisis, difficulty to difficulty, struggle to struggle. It's been exhausting. It's been so hard.

I am turning 50 in a month and a half. It's a new decade. I am trying to make an effort to be thoughtful about what I want and need for myself. I have some trips planned. I signed up for acting classes, because I thought it would be fun and it would be something just for me.

It's a work in progress.