I contemplated clicking “Move to Trash” several times as I typed this, but I think I’m okay with putting this out there.
I read this article on what kids with divorced parents think earlier. It makes my stomach turn. It makes me a little sad.
The boys and I have had endless conversations, usually on the 30-minute drive home from picking them up after work the weekends I do have them.
I know we shouldn’t bad-mouth the other parent–all the articles and people tell you this–but it’s hard not to when I think about everything that happened, how it happened and how the boys aren’t physically with me everyday, and WHY they’re not with me: to spite me.
When we have these conversations it’s almost like verbal vomit; a desperate plea from me for them to understand that if I had $10,000 to go to jury trial they would be with me.
Eenan thinks about it, I know he does because he’s verbal about it. Jaylen, not so much. He’s more reserved in general. He’ll input his thoughts when we’re having one of those conversations once in a while, at least.
I know that back then when we first separated he and his family would talk crap about me to the kids. They told me so themselves. That I was the reason everything fell apart, that I was the one who abandoned them, when I never did. They took them from me. They planned it perfectly.
But I hope the boys know the truth; I mean, they’ve told me themselves they do. They remember what our life together was like. Yes, there we good memories, but at the same time there was a lot of resentment and regret on his part, which eventually led to the marriage dissolving.
And on Jorge’s end; it’s hard to be nice about the boys’ mother when she does things like she did yesterday. When she wastes away their child support in bars. When they need things for school or clothes and she can’t afford them ’cause the money is gone. It’s hard to “be civil” when you know that goes on. When you know they’d be better off with you.
I know she does it; the kids have mentioned it in passing and, hello, even goes on social media to get pity/pats on the back from her supporters, by bad-mouthing Jorge. Sometimes, like yesterday, we get pissed off and stoop to that level. You can only be the “better person” for so long.
I’d read this other article–I almost wanted to send it to the other parents–about how teenagers and adults needed long-term therapy because of their divorced parents and them bad-mouthing each other. I know I, myself, need years of therapy to get over everything. I tell Jorge about it all the time. I don’t want our kids to go through that; what the people in this article have. They’ve been through enough, and this article really opened my eyes. But when you just can’t see eye-to-eye with the other parents, it’s hard to come to that peace. When you want all the kids to live with you and they don’t, it’s hard to come to it. When you have the history that we all have, it’s hard to come to it. But, for the kids’ sake, maybe, hopefully, one day it’ll happen.
Maybe.
