Lighten up, it's just a joke...

I know that most of my blogs are rants, but this is a huge one today. I've been trying to be calm about the storm that my soon-to-be ex husband has caused in my life, but when I see a man tell me to lighten up about a joke he chose to make about "crazy women" (how men lose lives, freedom, etc...)...

I go off. And he got cursed out.

Lighten up, it's Friday.

You're goddamn right it is. It's Friday. My husband was supposed to report for jail today. A measly 7-day sentence, which he couldn't handle because his parents taught him it was bad to be gay, so he's afraid that communal shower time will get him found out. And you know what? Me, being the saint that I am, I went to him and tried to gently tell him that my son and I would still love him. I don't care if my son has three dads and a mom, let everyone be happy and sane! Too much to ask, I guess.

Yes, it's Friday. And he sits getting pampered in the damned hospital, with no charges against him now. He appealed, due to illness. Illness he's known about for months, while I was eating one meal a day to pay for his insulin. His lawyer is treating me like I'm Manti Te'o, and that this man's written threats to me were all a lie. I am supposed to give a violent, sociopathic drunk access to my special needs child.

Yes, it's all a joke.

It's a joke that it took me 2.5 years to get my local authorities to listen. It's a joke when I see my husband, and every new ally he has (because no one who truly knows him is on his side, not even his family...he's too ashamed to tell them), glares at me indignantly in their white male privilege. How dare I ever speak up, speak out? It's a joke that the police insulted me as a mother, put me and my son out of our house repeatedly (because they couldn't make him leave, he was on the lease). It's a joke that the magistrate didn't even grant me the preliminary protective order when I sent the incriminating email to the precinct in February. It's a joke that one magistrate told me that it wasn't illegal to drink or argue. It's a joke that this idiot doesn't see what the combination of those two things can do in an already violent household. It's a joke that the officer I spoke to in February said he needed to call my husband (how do you have his number?) and "see if it's his email or not." That "we can't do these things in a few hours."

But you can cover your ass in a few hours if it's ascertained that you failed to protect a victim (who is now dead), and the media get a hold of it....I'm laughing out loud. In my head.

It's a joke that I may not be able to recover what things my son and I have left in that apartment. It's a joke that the $3400 I put down on this place has been eaten up, and he might get what little is left of it, after the sheriff locks the place, and the rental company chooses to claim it cost a thousand dollars to steal my furniture....that I can't put in storage because I live off of $300 a month (I'm disabled). It's a joke that this is the second time he has abandoned an apartment full of our things, because without me, his worthless wife (worthless=no income), he cannot pay a single bill.

It's a joke that he was on probation already, under threat of JAIL TIME if he didn't complete the terms. It's a joke that he didn't complete the terms, and ultimately just got charged. It was felt that him pissing his way through a batterer class that doesn't even begin to address violence against women, not to mention drug and alcohol treatment was punishment enough. He saw women in his class who were there for defending themselves, and told me I needed to go with him, that I could learn from it. How funny. He bragged about how he could drink through his alcohol treatment class. It's HILARIOUS that he now has what I call his "handler," his AA sponsor who looks at me like I'm the devil. Well guess what, more funnies to come. I'm in Al-anon, trying to piece my life back together.

It's a joke that this man will probably get disability faster than me. I have been sick for six years; he has imbibed his liver and kidneys to ruin, and will probably lose a foot. So he'll get all this help for being a complete and utter tool. While I am still waiting for the hearing I deserve. I hope all his limbs fall off, I seriously do. Then I can bring my son to see him (after the protective order expires, if he's still breathing in two years) and tell him, "this is what addiction does to you, son."

It's a joke that if my husband were any race other than CAUCASIAN, he'd be under the jail by now, but through theft of federal property, through repeated appearances of the cops to our house, through pinning me to the floor and threatening to kill me, through putting it in writing that he was going to steal my kid and make his face "the last thing" I should see, he has managed to avoid jail time. And yes, that was a long sentence. Deal with it. The fact that appearances have been even on the table each time he has gone off is a joke.The fact that he can even exploit this is a joke. It's a joke that each judge, each lawyer he has looks like him, and because he can at least iron his clothes and shed a tear, they identify with him, and vilify me. It's a joke when both he and his lawyers correct my use of pronouns, when it has been me and me alone who has cared for this child since he was two months old...even with dear old dad (drunk) in the house.

It's a joke that I cannot leave this state with my child without his permission, and that of the court. Even though I have sole custody for now. If I do, I get slapped with criminal charges, and I lose my child. My baby goes back to him, addiction or not. It's a joke that I have to wait until November to file for divorce; even though our marriage ended on the 3rd of December, 2011, when the cops punished me for having a nervous breakdown (they took me to a mental health facility...in cuffs with no shoes and half clothed). They gave my frightened child to a clearly drunk man. In their half apology to me later, they admitted that he was drunk.

It's a joke that CPS holds me equally as responsible as my husband for any domestic violence incident, because we have a child in common. So...in essence, I need to just shut up and take it. I should have been psychic and seen who he was, but since I didn't achieve that, I need to just cower in a corner and hope that he doesn't kill me.

It's a joke that there are people stupid enough to say, "why don't you just leave?" Do you have room at your house? Because I could not get into any shelter (I wasn't battered ENOUGH), my family has no clue, and homeless shelters have waiting lists here. So I'm with someone who is abusive in a completely different way. So funny....haha.

What the hell?

This is funny? I need to lighten up? No, you need to get real.

But here's what's funny. Here's what truly puts a smile on my face: Karma.

Dear Husband,

Your health is failing. Your family has abandoned you. Your colleagues are embarrassed to have known you (but not me). You have three criminal charges on your record in less than six months. Your autistic, non-verbal son started talking, counting, saying his letters and proving his genius when he got away from you. He hugs EVERYONE now, instead of stimming and running away. All of this, the opposite of what he did when you were kicking dishes across the house and hiding beer bottles in the bushes.

And I will move on. Taking out at the knees every male (and female) I see who just doesn't get that this is an issue. One day at a time I will completely re-build my life. I see that now. For several months I have only been thinking of escaping the other personality disorder in my life, but I have since learned how to draw boundaries, and they're surprised. You are surprised that you can't come near your child but for two hours a month for the next two years.

Domestic violence is not funny. And YES women abuse men. But given the gender inequality that has been in place ever since settled farming, it's a fact that women have it far worse. We are told to call numbers, to speak up for ourselves...yet when we do, we hit walls. In court, in front of the police. At our jobs. In society.

So if you want to joke about this, don't do it around me. And the person who did this just told me that "it's not about you and your problems." You are right. It's not about me. It's about me and every PERSON like me, man, woman and child who have literally lost everything because of the true crazy people in this country. Not bitchass whiny men who got their paint jobs keyed for sleeping around on their women.

So lighten up. I've simply corrected your stupidity. You don't have to whine about it. It's not about you, it's about the collective idiocy of you and every fool like you.

A New Hobby

I've been looking for ways to make the time pass, while I'm in limbo. Here's what I've come up with.

I painted this tonight. I haven't put a brush to paper since kindergarten. It looks better in the photo, but I'm still proud of it. It's a start.

The pink ones are supposed to be cherry blossom trees. I'm in a cherry blossom mood right now, with all fo them blooming. Yay spring.

The teal ones are cherry blossoms as well, overlaying what are supposed to be fans. Shoot, I may try painting fans. Who knows.

I started experimenting with these things as a way to supplement my as of yet non-existent disability income. If I can make a new career path out of this, it would be wonderful.

But at least it's something to take my mind off my demons. I'm capable of something.

Processing it all...

I don't talk about it.

I don't talk about it in therapy, I don't talk about it with my friends. But it's something that is bubbling over inside of me, and I feel that I must exorcise this, or else it will eat me alive.

I am incredibly lonely. And I fear that I will never, ever get rid of this feeling that I have always carried with me, that the world is passing me by. That life is going on all around me, and I cannot reach it. I know that these feelings of insignificance were instilled within me by the way my parents chose to treat me, and were solidified by my early interaction with my peers...not to mention the five years I spent with Steve. But I feel that only I can be held responsible if these feelings continue to linger.

But I don't know how to get rid of them.

I do not want to spend the rest of my life alone, but I am terribly afraid of letting someone close to me again. I am afraid of what they will do with my vulnerability, of what will happen if I let someone in again. Not to mention, Steven's involved now, and I cannot have people just running in and out of his life.

Not to mention, I am afraid of men now. I don't show it, but I am afraid. I've come across far too many who blame women for their choice to subjugate the female sex. It is truly frightening.

But how I get when I am all alone, and I look out of my window and perceive that there is something intangible, yet necessary out there that I must attain...that mania scares me to death.

I am hoping that with my emancipation comes peace. I am truly hoping. Because I'm tired of crying when no one's looking. I live in my imagination, because reality has been so cruel. But no one else is truly in there with me, and as I weave my fantasies, deep inside I know this.

Help.

Statue

I think that I have been in the same place for so long, that people think I will never ever move...

Well, be prepared to be surprised.

When I lived in Germany, I was schocked (loudly) quite a few times by human statues. They were so very still...curious in their poses. I would walk up to them, and these people would suddenly move!

Imagine my initial fear, then shock...then absolute admiration for this person who could literally make their breath shallow enough not to be detected.

Um...I'm moving.

Someone told me the other day that they would be an old person when I achieved my ambitions. Most likely not, but if you ever say that to me again, you will definitely be amongst those I pretend not to know...

Is 31/32 really all that old? Is it really? Because if I died tomorrow, it might be said that I died too young. Heaven knows a few people would throw up their hands and say, "good riddance."

Please don't worry...I'm on my way out of your hair.

I'm sorry, so very sorry it's taken me so long to move.

8 of Swords

This would shock my more conservative family members, but I have always dabbled a bit in what they call "the occult". Well, when you start dreaming about people dying when you're 12, when you dream of unfamiliar places where you later end up, when the hair stands up on the back of your neck to warn you about a person (and yet you ignored it at first) who would ultimately become a danger to your life...you find it hard to just sit one day a week and be told what to think. When my great-grandmother died, I didn't know about it until the day of the funeral (which I missed, thanks Ma), yet I was puzzled as to why she was on my mind so much that week. It started on a Monday, and culminated with the news of her death on Saturday. She died that Monday, and I was shocked to learn that as I had been preening and singing that Saturday, so sure I'd win a place in the state choral competitions (I did not), she was being buried. I have never been able to visit her grave. She meant the world to me.

The title of this blog is very significant, because the 8 of swords is a tarot card. I have been reading the cards since I was a teen. Initially it started out as just a young girl's preoccupation; this wild idea that you could actually map the future. My biggest fear was, and still is (though that is fading) the future. Tomorrow truly terrifies me...but that is because my yesterdays have such painful memories attached to them. Each time I got up the hope that tomorrow would be different, I was gifted with pain that was much the same as what I had experienced yesterday. So I don't really look at tomorrow the way little orphan Annie does. I long to see tomorrow, but I brace myself against it.

While I do believe that some instances and events can be "sensed", and while I have unwittingly answered some of my darkest questions (like the date of my father's death, though it was not phrased that way), the tapestry of life is just too complex to map out completely. We lack control for a reason; just look what is going on all over the world today...perpetrated by people who wish to control others. That is not what I want. Not to mention, life might actually turn out to be rather scary, if you knew for certain each and every painful event that would come your way. Like people bracing themselves for the poke of a needle, and making the experience much worse by their tension, how horrible would it be...knowing just when that cancer diagnosis was to come? Seriously...

In tarot art, the picture that would depict the 8 of swords would be a blindfolded woman with chains around her wrists, surrounded by 8 swords. Sometimes they are suspended in the air, sometimes they are planted in the dirt around her. There are hundreds, if not thousands of images, and some divert from what I have described above, but my description is usually the norm. There are some important things to note about this picture however, and this is why it resonates with me today.

The woman feels trapped. The general feeling associated with this image is "restriction". However, her wrists are bound by the chain in a manner that suggests that all she need do is move her hands apart to be free; the blind around her eyes has only been tied in one loose knot, much the same as that binding her wrists...and the swords around her are in such a configuration that she could easily step from in between them.

In other words, her captivity is imagined.

I have to remind myself of that in my current situation; that the imprisonment I see is just an illusion. That my jailer is really truly a coward, though her hatred for me is strong, and that I could overpower her at any time. It's just that my stregnth training has come under the brutality of her animosity towards me. I do not understand just why she hates me so much. I don't. She is the reason why I am not against abortion. I know first hand what it's like to grow up with someone who just wasn't supposed to keep you.

Still, each day brings a new change. I am determined to invest in my life, to place in it all the things that she deliberately blocked, which ultimately helped lead me to where I am now. I say "helped" because I am still the author of my own life, even if there were other contributors. I look back and see many occasions where I could have chosen to think or act differently. The fact that I didn't yet know that this was an option really isn't much of an excuse. When you break the law, ignorance of said law will not save you from the consequences. So it is in this situation as well.

My "jailer" hates the idea of my progress (and happiness), and in her little, sick needling ways, does her best to try to trip me up. But I shall keep calling her out. I fear that one day this will cause her to pull out all the stops and render me homeless (like she tried to do right before my stroke), because shelters in this area are not walk-in...not for families. I bet on the assumption that she would not like for people to see her true colors, should she put her grandchild (who she claims to love) out on the street. Me, I'm just a lazy whore (her description). But her grandson is pure, untainted by the mess that is his mother. She'd lose her status if she were to compromise him. Still, he is not a gambling chip, and I must step carefully.

When the image of the 8 of swords comes to mind, my husband represents the swords themselves. He still has the ability to cut me, even if protective orders and fear of imprisonment keep him at bay for now. He is still a sociopath, and he still tends to snap when he doesn't get his way with me. Then he tells me that he feels for what I'm going through. Sure dude...fuck you. No, seriously. Fuck you.

Ultimately I will step around him, and he shall injure my flesh no longer.

My mother serves as the blindfold and the chains. I feel like it is near impossible for me to see what my life could be, with her constantly standing in the way. Yet the true problem is that I have forgotten that I know how to walk. I can step around her. And the chains? What are they, truly? The lies she tells about me? Well, I doubt that I have to be explicit about what I think of people who would believe the things she says about me, without ever asking me for my side of the story. Especially when her greatest lie involves me nearly being molested...while she stays with the man who tried to do it...and twists the story to make me a veritable Lolita.

Truly, I am free. Even if walls and bars surround me, my mother and my husband (the two most toxic people in my world, who I will be glad to be rid of permanently) cannot imprison my mind unless I let them.

An "ugly" business...

I am getting a bit irritated as of late with the amount of people who refer to the dissolution of my marriage and the subsequent custody battle as an "ugly business." Look people, half of all marriages in this country end in divorce, and I readily admit that I did mine wrong. I did it for the wrong reasons, and I definitely should not have done it. But my motives were pure, as they are now, as I try to end this thing.

The thing that gets me is that people view my behavior, my attempts to keep my son safe from his addicted psychopathic father as "ugliness." Really? And the situation that would arise if I allowed this man to continue to treat us as property is not ugly? Would it be better for your sensibilities if I shut up and submitted, and continued to endure my pain (and watch my son suffer) behind closed doors?

Even the courts see my situation in two different legal lights. The protetive order that I have been forced to take out is a CIVIL MATTER. How in the hell?! How? You are seeking protection from someone who is obviously trying to kill you, but it's not a criminal matter off the bat? I don't get that, but I don't get a lot of things in this backwards country. Of course he will have his day in court for threatening me, and he will say he didn't do it, just like he didn't do it the first time. Or he will fall back on trusty old "I don't remember," and I'm sure I will damn near fall apart in that courtroom. But throughrout all of this, there is this belief that I should still allow him to see my child. I did so, even after I went and reported to the police that he had threatened me. Why? Because domestic violence is not seen as an outright assault on the children. To me, when you raise your hand or your voice to your spouse, you are simultaneously abusing your children, because they have to watch...and due to the fact that YOU THE PARENT are their foundation, and the base of all they see themselves to be, they will blame themselves when you fuck up.

So why is it that a man can beat his wife, and yet still see his kids? Could it be that the equality gap with regards to gender in this country is still that damned wide?

A magistrate laughed at me in 2011, when I took out my third protective order on this man and said: "It's not illegal to argue. It's not illegal to drink in your home." No it's not, you old geezer, but the combination of those two things prove fatal time and time again. Get your head out of your anus, please.

I dropped the last protective order case because my lazy lawyer told me that if I lost it, it would be held against me in the custody hearing. While I have finally, after two-and-a-half years of struggling gotten the police to pay attention to me, I still feel like the justice system sees this whole situation as a nasty marital spat...instead of the danger to myself and my son that it truly is.

I watch my boy blossom; talk, learn how to put together jigsaw puzzles (on his own, no less), learn his ABCs, and so much more, and I think how all of that will be lost if I cannot get the judge to see that my husband is a fucking sociopath...and that I should not be blamed for neither being psychic to begin with, nor submissive enough to pacify him once he first attacked me. It doesn't matter that I have been in fear of my life for well over a year. It doesn't matter that this man has a long history of bad (and now criminal) behavior. Because of his socio-economic status, a judge can very well be swayed by his calm lying, if he can look at this man and see something he can relate to. No doubt this fool will show up in slacks and a tie Friday. Hopefully I can convince the judge to ignore that, and the fake penitence that he will exhibit.

Last night, I had a nightmare. My parents took me and Steven away for a weekend, and it was nice to feel removed from this situation for a while. I've been playing out this courtroom drama in my head ever since the detective knocked on my door. As I lay down last night, I tried to mentally prepare myself to come back here. I had two nightmares last night. In the first one, it was a replay of that night in October of 2010 when he essentially blew up at me for taking the baby to the park without him. I ran with Steven into the bedroom, locked the flimsy door, and dialed 911. I whispered to the operator that I had a protective order, but that my husband was still after me. I could see his fingers reaching around the door, his shoes kicking through it, his eyes peering through it like he was Jack Nicholson. I felt the bile rush into my throat in that dream, I felt the terror. I tried to open a nearby window without him knowing what I was doing, and I woke up saying "no." Thank goodness I didn't scream and wake up Steven. I fear that is next.

In the second dream, I saw him in a huddle of drunk homeless people (not too far from the truth at this point). He saw me, and proceeded to follow me. I awoke, and that was my escape.

Is this how I am going to feel for the rest of my life? And what will happen if each consecutive judge does not come to the same conclusion, that this man is dangerous, that he sees both myself and my son as property, and that we need protection? Right now I cannot even legally leave the state to flee.

And I'm so scared.

"You don't need that stress..."

It is amazing how completely blind some of the people around me are. Especially when it comes to their affect on me. Either I am that quiet about it, or they are just dumb. Or maybe they don't care, but why say the things you do to me if you aren't concerned how you affect me?

Living in my mother's house is like being in the middle of a cold war. Each side has their nukes primed, but as yet (meaning this year) they have not gone off. I guess I'm like Syria, in that I'm doing a little more testing than my family, the UN would like. Oh well. I'm going to keep doing it. Screw your sanctions. It's not exactly fair that you've been able to launch on me for a decade-and-a-half, and I can't even contemplate retaliation. Seriously, screw that. I've gotten a taste of what I could be, and I'm not going to sit around and wait for your permission. If I decimate you in the process of realizing this, just know that it's a casualty of the war you never should have started with me.

My mother keeps referring to my marriage as "stress that I don't need." As if living in this house is a walk in the park, as if I actually like being here. She does offhandedly refer to my living here as "perhaps a bit stressful," and I just look at her incredulously. Seriously? Just a little bit stressful, eh? You had a kid you didn't want, you abused said, kid, you lied about it, you ruined my life until I stopped letting you do so. It got to the point where I preferred living in a homeless shelter to living with you, and I may just exercise that option this summer, just to find a place of peace for myself and my son that I can afford...

...and yet you think that your asininity has been "just a little bit stressful."

We got jokes, do we?

Well wait until I start telling mine. They're a hoot.