Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

How do they do all this on television so quickly AND have time for all those commercial breaks?

One of my friends that went to the sentencing made the comment Monday morning that "it wasn't anything like it is on t.v."

Yup. And believe it or not, those hospital shows are a little off base as well.

I spent last night ruminating, chewing my cud, and occasionally mooing.

STBX's big thing was talking about therapy and how much he's learned and how far he's come. I can guarantee that if you go to a therapist and say "I've got problems because my father was Tritan, King of the Mer-people and he never had time for me," you probably wouldn't get too far in therapy.

I'm imagining that his therapy is just like everything else in his life. Completely self centered. I feel this way...this was done to Me...I I I Me Me Me.

It's one thing to hear a therapist say "You should admit to this because taking it to trial would only hurt your daughter."

It's another thing to take into your heart that 99.9% of what you have done to your kids has been negative. You don't have to molest a kid to screw them up. You can ignore them. You can have nothing but hateful, sarcastic things to say to them. You can treat their very existence as a burden. You can sigh heavily and respond negatively whenever any expectation is placed upon you as a father. (Going to two school events in eleven years when the majority of the time you chose to stay home and play on the computer is not stellar parenting. FYI.)

Even though it was my daughter's idea to change our name and it was my daughter that came up with our new name, I had to check in with my kids yesterday to make sure that I was not placing words in their mouth.

(For some nagging reason, I'm curious to know if he's doing this to fuck with me or to fuck with all of us. As if splitting those hairs really matters...)

I asked them how they felt about their father. I asked them if they could ever foresee a time (15 years down the road) that they would feel compelled to see him or to get back in touch with him. I asked if there was anything left there in their heart of hearts.

And both said no.

Their father never had the capacity to love them. I honestly don't think he even knows what the word means. From my perspective, his idea of love was "you will take care of me. you will be the mother I never had. I will be the child that can only take and take and take."

And he always took whatever he wanted. Consenting or not. Legal or not.

As he's moving through "therapy", no doubt getting "better" every second, my journey through therapy has shown me that our marriage was always a nightmare. As I've stated before, when you look at a listing of signs of physical, sexual and verbal abuse and see your entire marriage spelled out, it rather kicks you in your lady parts.

Coming to terms with what he did to the kids also means coming to terms with what he did to me. Remembering the day that I stood outside our house in desolate Carney, Oklahoma, holding my baby to me, and sobbing because all I wanted to do was to escape and I didn't have anywhere to escape to...seeing that in retrospect, knowing that the baby in my arms would grow up to be his next victim, it cuts me off at my knees.

This whole name change thing, it is aimed squarely at his whole idea of power. Anytime he didn't want to do something, he didn't. Anytime he did want to do something, he did. Now, there are times when these might be admirable traits, but when it involves destroying other human beings, probably not so good. His last piece of power is "ownership" of the kids.

The part of me that is still fucked up from the last 17 years of my life wants to believe that he is hanging on to the name thing out of some twisted idea that there will be a reconciliation some day and he just can't get it through his head that it isn't going to happen.

But then, my daughter's intelligence cuts through the crap in my head.

"He's doing it because he's a dick."

She always was smarter than her mother.