Would things have been different?

For those who knew me they know that my divorce was simple.  We agreed we wanted the divorce.  I typed the papers up, we submitted them to the Judge on a Thursday and they were signed the following Tuesday.

It wasn’t until two years later that things turned ugly and bitter.  The state did a review of our divorce papers and decided child support should be added.  When we initially filed we both just wanted out.  We were then making the same amount of money-ironically working the same job at the same Correctional Institution. We agreed to no child support going either way.  The state felt differently.

This was the beginning of a long nasty battle.  

I left my job at the prison when the stress from work, and the stress from this child support drove me to feeling and attempting suicide.

I will never forget that night.  I was the one who called the ambulance when I realized I couldn’t do this to my daughters nor to my best friend.  

Shortly after I arrived at the hospital there were 2 Associate Wardens and my direct supervisor in the lobby of the emergency room.  As I was choking down the charcoal the nurse came in and told me there were people who were asking to see me.  She told me that I didn’t have to let them in if I didn’t want to.  I asked her to please wait a few minutes and let me choke down the nasty black liquid.  Several minutes later she came in and told me they were being persistent as they needed some information from me.  I told her to let them come back.

I will never forget as all three of them entered the room and my department associate warden’s question was “is this because of anything to do with an inmate?”  When I answered no he sat down on the edge of the bed and took my hand asking me “why when there is so much to live for, my children, my family and anyone who loved me would I do something like this?”  I told him I couldn’t give him a rational answer.  There wasn’t one.

I explained my daughters were with their father for the night, I had been stressed and I had crawled into a bottle or two of alcohol.  I didn’t want to feel anything.   I wanted to be numb.  When the alcohol didn’t work I found what I could in the medicine cabinet.

Several hours later I was moved to another hospital so I could be kept under psychiatric care for a period of time.  

While I was in the hospital the psychiatrist and my supervisor came down for a visit.  I commented that I had not seen my children in the time I had been there even though I had left repeated requests to see them. 

The following day my ex brought my daughters to see me.

I learned later that my boss and associate warden (who was also over my ex’s department) had told them if he did not want to bring the children to me they would be happy to.  

During this stay in the hospital I was diagnosed with PTSD.  I was started on medications for depression.  The prescriptions I had at the time were not available in generic form, so AFTER my insurance paid their 80% my portion was still nearly $200 every  month.  

If I had pulled my head out of my ass I would have gone to the VA hospital and worked with them on purchasing my prescriptions and seeing an out-patient psychiatrist.  But I didn’t so the bills were piling up around me.

Shortly after I was swimming in bills I had to put a space heater in one small room of my house and feed my children nothing but cold sandwiches, fruits and vegetables that did not need to be cooked as I had no electricity.  My neighbors kindly ran an extension cord for us to live in that room.

On another occasion it was the water bill I couldn’t /didn’t pay and we had to go to the institution’s gym to shower.

Knowing what I do now, had I been working with the Veterans Administration I could have been moved into a fiduciary program where my bills and spending could be overseen by someone other than myself.  Years later I would be involved in this program with one of my friends overseeing it all.  Having a clear head and someone who is better at math than I am kept me above water and taught me how to budget out.

It has been years since I have been officially on the VA Program, but I still have someone who manages the money.  He sends me a list of how to pay the bills, and tells me what I can spend on groceries.  I send him copies of all the receipts just to keep me honest.

Like a snowball my world seemed to be falling in.  I remember one day the Warden pulled me aside and asked if he could speak with me for a moment.  My boss got a terrified look on his face wondering I am sure what was up.

The Warden commented to me that for as bitter as our child support/child custody battle was becoming he was very impressed that we could manage to maintain an extremely professional relationship at work.  I told him it was because we had been married in the same unit in Germany and our military work relationship was coming through.

Our child support hearings had turned to child custody.  See, after I went into the hospital my ex believed I was no longer fit to be a parent to my daughters.  

He hired the most notorious attorney in the area.  My hand was forced and I had to hire one just to keep  the playing field level.  She \subpoenaed my boss, the 2 associate Wardens, the institution psychiatrist just for starters.

When we sat down to do a deposition before trial she asked for two days.  My attorney told her he would let her know.  20 minutes into the proceeding he made his first call to the judge asking about her line of questioning,  Let’s just say it wasn’t his only objection to her line of thinking.

Anyone who has sat on the other side of the court with her (I know a few) will tell you this woman makes bitch sound like a wonderful smelling rose.

So as she filed motion after motion after motion and then subpoenaed more and more people my bills were adding up so fast just the basics were well out of my reach.  We were living on rice and macaroni, maybe I had a little meat to throw in here and there, but that was few and far between.

I had no choice I had to come up with money.  First I sold my guns.  Second I sold my living room furniture.  Then I sold the t.v.  Eventually I sold the piano my grandfather had given my mother and I for my 8^th birthday.  The day that happened I cried until I threw up.  I just prayed my grandfather would understand.

Sitting with a psychiatrist every week didn’t seem to make anything move better.  It just felt like it was getting worse.

Finally, I made the decision to leave the job.  I had no idea where I would go or what I would do, I just couldn’t work there anymore.

Eventually I was offered a job in Salt Lake City, Utah.  This would mean a move from Oregon.  

I was under the understanding that my youngest daughter would join me and her sister after she finished the volleyball season.  That never happened.  In fact over the course of the next  5-6 years we lost complete communication.

 

I can’t tell you much about what happened in Salt Lake Ciity.  My oldest daughter has told me some stories of what happened-I have no recollection of most of it.  

Eventually I started to slide again.  I remember one or two trips to the emergency room but my daughter has had to fill in the rest of the blanks for me.  She tells me it was almost daylight and we had been at the hospital all night and the nurse/case worker hadn’t been seen for hours but when she did come back she had all the paperwork ready for my signature to travel up the hill to the VA and become enrolled in their system. During my first intake process they looked at many medical records I had and I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder.

It wasn’t long after that I called my parents and I did the one thing I had sworn I would never do, I moved back to my hometown.  The same one that at the age of 19 I felt like I was suffocating, felt like if I didn’t leave then there would be no tomorrow.

So my daughter and I stayed with my parents for several months until my VA and my Federal Employee Disability checks became regular. 

Circumstances I am not willing to talk about at this point happened any my ex-husband and his girlfriend showed up on my doorstep one morning and my daughter left with them to go back to Oregon. 

I ended up in a local hospital psych ward for a week not to long after that,

Things just got worse.  

Several court hearings later I was told that even though I made $17,300 to his nearly $60,000 I would pay HIM child support in the amount of $133 per month.  When I argued that if I paid that and all my bills it would only leave me with $25 per month, the judge told me I needed to get my priority set right.  As a government employee and VA you know it came out of my checks without any choice. Eventually they would garnish my paycheck for $266 after my youngest child turned 18 and they wanted to close the case it took nearly 8 months. 

I was also told that if I wanted to see my children I would have to pay for their travel.

My visitation was interrupted more than once.  When I couldn’t afford to buy the tickets I would get nasty letters about NOT WANTING to see the kids.  

One year I had purchased the girls tickets to come for a vacation for Christmas break.   I drove for nearly 5 hours or more in a driving show storm to the airport.  I had traveled early just to be safe,  The next morning my youngest daughter called me on the phone and told me her flight had been delayed due to the weather.  I told her that was ok I was already there.

She then told me that “Dad needs to leave so he can get to Grandma and Grandpa’s in Vegas”  I asked multiple times to have her dad come to the phone and he refused.  She then told me he wouldn’t wait.  I told her to hold on I would call her back in a minute.  After talking with a loved one I called her back and I told her to tell her Dad that I would put the gas in his truck buy the food for the trip if he would drive from Portland to Boise.

He refused.   He drove down through California and over to Vegas taking both girls with him.  One ticket was later used by my daughters best friend to come for a visit with me.

Unfortunately this was common over the years.  It is what drove me.  Anger. Deep seeded anger,  It held me together because there was nothing else

Both of my girls stopped talking to me even when they were hearing from me daily in mailed notes.  Well at least I was sending them.

Years later I was told that they didn’t think I loved them, that I didn’t want anything to do with them. 

I missed my youngest daughters high school years in part because we didn’t talk.

Finally I am building some rapport with both but I have to wonder will it ever be the same? How badly did I screw up my kids by being sick and not realizing it?

December 17, 2013 would have been our 22 anniversary.  If I had been diagnosed long before I was, when I was first married or the classic symptoms started would we still be married.

Lately that question has haunted me.

He has not said a single work to me in 10 years.  It is either the children or an attorney.  I left my daughters graduation in a hurry just to avoid confrontation. I am not looking forward to being in a happy occasion for our children when there is so much that has been said and done.

But he keeps showing up in my dreams.  When I sleep I find myself walking through everything that was good without remembering the bad.  I blame (when awake and asleep) a lot of what happened on myself and the symptoms of my disorder,  But I have to ask myself would we have made it if I wasn’t sick?  Here is a man I developed a great distaste for over the years but he has not dated hardly at all from what I am told.

I was also told by my daughter that her grandfather had split my ex and woman from Korea up.  He was stationed there and he fell in love with a young woman.  Very pretty I came across several pictures over the years.  But my ex father in law convinced my ex that all she wanted was a green card and then she would leave him,  My ex left her behind.

I was a woman that was approved of until I got sick and this illness took over my life.  

So why am I dreaming of what could have been? In some strange way do I still love him or have I finally accepted I broke his heart as badly as he broke mine?   He once told me he would never remarry if we split up he wouldn't be like his sister on marriage number 4. I used to wish him misery but I can't find it in myself anymore. I have no answers for those questions.

I can say I have been blessed though every dark day, for every bitter word, every lost memory I did have a wonderful person who never left my side even when I was horrible to him.  I still struggle with my emotions and frequently I still am ignorant, angry and mistrusting,  sometimes give him much worse than he deserves, but then he often deserves better than me.