Saturday, August 13, 2011

My anniversary

Today is a special day for me.

Today's date marks the second anniversary since my ex-husband and I separated. His verbal and emotional abuse had been ramping up for years, but it was completely over the top on our last vacation together. We took what should have been a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime trip with all our children--a cruise to Alaska on one of the better cruise lines with really nice cabins. We were supposed to be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary.

Instead of a happy, romantic adventure there was anger and unhappiness. No matter what I did, my husband was mad at me. No matter what the kids did, he was upset. The kids started avoiding him. While I didn't actively avoid him, I did not go out of my way to seek him out. Which made him ever more angry at me.

Then to cap off the ugliness of this vacation, when we got on the plane to return home, they were oversold. At the last minute, one more person boarded and the only seat left was in first class. The flight attendants pulled out their lists of frequent flyers and offered the first class seat to my husband. Without a word to me, he jumped up and moved to first class leaving me to sit next to the man who had boarded late. Happy anniversary.

As soon as we got back home, my husband left early the next day to go on an out-of-town work trip. Over the course of the next couple of days, I thought long and hard about my life and my marriage. I remembered the three times my husband had hit our children in anger, and I thought about how miserable our "joyous" vacation had been. I made the decision to ask him to move out for awhile so that I could have some space and time to fully assess the situation.

When my husband came back from his work trip, I handed him his (still packed from vacation) suitcase and asked him to go away. He got angry and cursed at me and told the children that I was a terrible wife and mother. But he left. I'm so very thankful he left without violence.

Three months after he moved out, I filed for divorce.

Is your husband/wife/significant other verbally or emotionally abusive to you or your children? Check out the links in the top left column. Share them with a friend who you suspect of being a victim of abuse. I'm so very glad that I'm not living that life any more. No one should live like that.




Monday, August 1, 2011

Another example of the messed up family court system

Here's my problem with family court. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's no way of figuring out what kind of crazy thing is going to happen next.

Here's an article about a woman who doesn't want her children to have visitation with their step-mother. Her reason is valid--the step-mother murdered her own children. But according to Commissioner Leonid Ponomarchuk it's no big deal. The bio-Dad of these kids has hidden from Mom the fact that they've been hanging out with a child murderer. And she hasn't killed them so far.  So, it's perfectly fine.


Check it out.