Earlier in the day I started a post about my annual New Year’s review, where I take stock of what I’ve done, both good and bad, changes I’ve made, and my own internal path and then decide where I want to change that path, pruning a bit here and there, maybe finding a challenging overgrown trail, back tracking where necessary if I’d tread on anyone along the way. I will still find the place and time to write that post, but I was interrupted.
I opened my email and in it is an email from my exhusband. Ex as of November 19th (blog entry) anyway. I open it to see that it has been written to everyone in his address book. This includes our 8 year old son, as well as old friends of mine with whom I talk once in a great while over IM, and other common aquaintances and friends, even including an address to post to a community (200+ members) message board. Thankfully, for my own sanity since I still live here in Denver and still see these people on a semi-regular basis, the email list is dead and it should have bounced. For that small thing I am very grateful.
The title “A New Year With New Hope” seemed fairly benign and with the ever present optimism I began to read his very long email. Instead of being a wish for a better year (which to be fair was actually present in a small paragraph at the end) it turned out to be a rant of the miseries in his life, of which there were a total of 2.
One was understandably, Hurricane Katrina, which has turned New Orleans upside down, and many people who’ve lived there all their lives, have returned to their city physically but are still trying to swallow the immensity of their loss. I can empathize with him there. I have read (and written) about the devastation of the Crescent City and some of the places I loved. And I only lived there for 13 years. It hurts bad enough to view from a far. I cannot even cop to empathy when it comes to the natives. It is a horror beyond horrors, and it didn’t stop just because the news coverage did. His writing about that tragedy is moving and sorrowful, and I understand his pain and suffering.
However, I was amazed to see his 2 paragraphs about his other tragedy. Me. The fact that I had with total malicious intent, through absolutely no actions of his own, ripped his 8 year old son from him. Quote 1:
“…This has been a year of learning that just because you have loved someone and trusted them that it doesn’t mean that they won’t do things to harm you just because they can”.
I got divorced. It sucks. But it hardly qualifies as hurting him just because I can. Of course, then I read further and started to understand what the “harm” actually referred to.
“…Along with those go the losing of parenting rights to my son because my ex-wife just happened to have the divorce happen at a time when I was hurricane victim and without funds to deal with defending my parenting rights. I should have qualified for legal aid to deal with the custody case. But because Colorado had already used up it’s legal aid allowance for the year that goes towards divorce and child custody cases, I didn’t even have that option. All I could do is sit back and allow whatever was going to happen to happen. My ex wife got everything she asked for because I was unable to legally respond to what she filed for.
Unbelieveable. I filed for divorce in June (way before the hurricane). The whole reason he got no parental rights was that he did nothing. He filed no responses, he did nothing to intervene. It was just obviously not important enough to research and do what he needed to do to participate in the decisions of parenting his own son. All of Colorado’s divorce forms are online. All directions (explicit) about what to file, how to file, where to file and when are included. There is a form for waiving the fee if you are too poor to pay (otherwise I could never have done it). And since he had called the clerk of court, and knew the date/time of the hearing he could even simply called in to participate without having filed anything.
Part of me wants to be very bitchy and say he did it just so he could blame me. Of course, that isn’t really it. He has always been, and continues to be, a victim. He has always had the inability to accept responsibility for his part in actions, and this is just one more way the world has unjustly acted upon him without him having any choice. In point of fact, the judge ruled that he was out of her jurisdiction. Since he had not filed anything, or attempted to be at the hearing by phone call, he essentially didn’t exist for the hearing. Therefore he got nothing.
…”I now have the means to prove my case, thanks to my ex-wife and her trying to dig up crap to use against me in our custody battle. I can and will redeem myself through the courts and get my parenting rights back for my son. In doing this I will not belittle myself by trying to take my son from my ex. I will simply get my rights to him back. I will be a part of his life and get the privilege to have him spend time with me.
Without being explicit this man has a case against him filed in Illinois for child molestation. He physically assaulted my then 14 year old son (not unprovoked but he also did not hold himself back like an adult should either). And he disappeared for weeks on end after leaving Denver not being employed gainfully and losing his apartment. These are just examples. There are more.
I resisted the urge to do a “reply all”. I resisted the urge to apologize to my some time friends through email, figuring they probably thought he was looney enough just from reading the email. And I was furious for it being directed to my 8 year old son’s email account. Thank God I help him with that and will delete it before seen.
Sorry for the rant. Sometimes you just gotta do it.
