...28 (in days gone by)...

  In Days Gone By:
 19.January.2021

While the kitchen tile project was ongoing, I'd the chance to reorganize all the file folder storage that "lives" beneath one of our sideboards and came across paperwork dating back to before I was married. Tax docs, our marriage license and copies of checks to all the wedding vendors, my ex's student loan repayment receipts, multiple certified copies of the restraining order (now expired) against him, etc... Enclosed in one were childhood photos of him that I had carefully placed in an envelope for Johannes at least 15 years ago. So while Henri napped (praise!), Johannes and I briefly sat down and looked through the photos, before he decided to dispose of them.

(As someone who takes a few photos (I kid, I kid) here and there, looking at these was...interesting...)

There's promise~possibility~potential, in those sweet little shots of baby and toddler...in those early teen/peak of athleticism track shots...even in the student and work i.d. cards. But to see them now, it's naught but illusion...a sort-of "alternate reality".

He's been spiraling for years...a vicious cycle of peaks and valleys that damages everyone involved.

From all accounts, he's been off his meds and is back to "self-medicating" with increasingly dangerous substance abuse.
From all accounts, his grasp on reality is in the wind right now.
From all accounts, his health is failing. It's terrible, and it's tragic, and it's...karmic? All that pain he's caused finding it's way back...

Tomorrow, his birthday...yet another year gone and nothing but wreckage to show for it. All the good advice and assistance and flat-out-doing-for-him-what-he-won't-do-for-himself by SO MANY people (myself included) just wasted effort.

And soon enough, a month away, Johannes turns 18. Despite his throwing away those photos and rejecting any "leftovers" (papers, photos, sentimental items), he'll carry this as part of his legacy his whole life. Nothing I have done, can do or want to do has ever erased the damage done by both action and inaction, threatening presence and dismissive absence.

If only it were as easy as tossing photos in the garbage, or shredding old files. If only it were as simple as shutting the door and ending the chapter.

But, you see...one chapter bleeds into the next. One door leads into another space. Everything gets carried on...

...3 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
18.December.2020

TL;DR

Trigger warning...mental health, spousal abuse, suicidal ideation, child neglect

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Emergency services are currently dispatched on another welfare check to my ex-husband. We expect a phone call confirming that he's being taken in for observation. If you are a prayer... go one further and pray he's determined unfit to be let back out. Pray that he be held. Pray that he be treated...long-term, in-patient.

He...spirals... quickly and dangerously and frequently. Earlier this month, he was communicative and self-aware...

read also:in the upward tick of manic mode.

During that time, he moved into another county, leaving behind the services others had worked so hard to set up for him, in a burst of 'outrunning his problems' energy.

Ill-advised doesn't even begin to cover it. Outraged that his previous landlord was asking for help with basic household chores (in return for exceptionally discounted room and board), he burned that situation to the ground and moved his dilapidated rv onto the property of a former friend he'd reconnected with. As of last week, the household was Covid positive. By all accounts, he's been holed up in the RV ever since. He's off his meds, has missed every appointment for care management, and is effectively reliant on his alcoholic friend for everything: food, transportation, electricity, water, advice, etc...

This is a man who, by want of both his ego and his illness, has damaged everything and everyone he touches. A man who both actively and passively abuses every person in his life, whether through violence or neglect. A man who buries his guilt underneath personal attacks on those who try to help him get help. Who knows he's done horrific things but believes his 'superior intellect' releases him from any responsibility for those actions.

And who, every time without fail, scorches the earth as he comes out of his manic phase... which makes it nigh on impossible to get him into care. Lashes out every time and then threatens suicide as the depression takes hold.

Fast forward: between last night and this morning he sent out his 'customary' novella of text messages full of vitriol, baseless accusations, and finally, farewells.

I'm...tired. This roller-coaster is exhausting. My eldest son and step-children deserve so much more... so much better. I hate this for them. I hate this for me. This man was my monster in the dark for years... and his brokenness does not erase the terror or the damage.

Words fail.

Untreated mental illness contaminates everyone in the circle...causes immeasurable stress and distress to every caregiver, no matter the distance. And burns out the very sympathy and empathy so needed by the one who is ill.

I fear for the day when he sinks a hook into my eldest.

I fear for the day that he goes beyond threatening.

...2 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
25.October.2018

The house is quiet.

Warm, and quiet.

Quiet enough that the infernal hum of the refrigerator sounds like a drill inside my skull.

He's home today, downed by a fever and head-cold symptoms. We slept in, miraculously, and I feel wholly refreshed. Sitting across from me here at the table, he has the dark circles and flushed cheeks of his fever and the furrowed brow of his concentration as he works on his engineering homework.

(Yup...That Mom, too. Home sick? Homework. Unless you're comatose!)

We took the morning "off"...sleeping in led to the laziest of breakfasts, still in pjs. Copious amounts of coffee and tea extended our table-sit while we chatted our way round how he was feeling, what was going on in school, etc...

I sat there, engaging in the conversation with most of my brain, while a small portion of it pecked away at the dissonance of what continues to unfold re:my stepchildren.

It's hard. Difficult. Impossible even, to wrap my head around the reality of their experience with their father...and remember how very close we came to being permanently scarred in those same ways.

He is light. Seated across from me. Looking up every few moments to reassure himself of my presence...of my attention. He is light and carefree in the stability-the solidity-the expected. But his half-siblings know nothing of those feelings.

In my head, I liken them to feral cats. All the potential, but none of the rearing...the raising. Acting solely on self-serving instinct, consequences be damned. It is, to me, horrifying to hear each piece, each drip drop drip of information that seeps out of the crumbling walls their father tried to erect around them. It is, to me, horrifying that this man is the primary caregiver-so ill-equipped for the job. So ill-equipped for his own life.

I always say how lucky I am that he is mine. That this glorious, brilliant, challenging young man is mine to raise and be raised up by. Mine to be the plus-one for. Mine to observe and record and be amazed by. But in that part of my brain that's worrying on that dissonance, I know it's not luck at all. He's become what he was meant to be because I did what was needed, no matter the cost...no matter the struggle...no matter the naysayers.

I wonder, often, if it's already too late for those two. If the path has already been set in concrete for them. Or if, perhaps, all the moves we players on the periphery are making....all the barriers and walls we are erecting and pushing in all around them will be enough to spin them off that axis and give them their best chance as well.

He's had the best chance or, at the very least, the best chance I could provide. And he's done wonders with it. Creating from these small pieces a world in which he creates...dominates...advocates...leads...inspires change. I am never not awestruck at where this life has taken us.

But I wonder, day in and day out, if it's too little-too late for those two. And I wonder what that will mean for him. Will he be dragged down by their dysfunction when they are all older? Will he inherit my 'need to rescue-need to help-need to fix' and find himself breaking himself into pieces trying to fill the holes in them?

Will he, as he's doing now, try to line up all the angles and make the picture symmetrical? Will he pour himself out into them?

Oh, I worry.

I worry about him. Of course I do. I worry for him...for who he will have to be when I am gone. For how he will move on from being part of a team of two to being just one.

I worry for them, these children I have chosen to love from afar. I worry for their chances and their outcomes and their day right now.

I worry for their father and his instability...worry that his emotional dysfunction will win out and he will lose himself, his life.

The house is quiet as we both sit here, he at his homework and I at this emptying out of the words in my head. It is quiet and calm and warm and peaceful and I am torn between the tranquility of our life and the chaos of theirs.

...fogged over...

November's clipping along at a steady pace, and blissfully predictable so far.  We're out of the pitch-black-mornings of early fall and (mostly) adjusted to the school schedule.

It seems (dare I say) that things are finally falling into place.

Yeah...yeah...

*knockonwood

*fingerscrossed

~~~~~~~~~~~~

By comparison though, just a handful of months ago, things were...grim.

Grim. Gray.

Even grimy.

So much so that I myself felt grim-gray-and grimy, by association.

The sickness that I had allowed into my life had turned into a full-blown contagion, taking down everyone and everything it came in contact with.  It had spread its greedy fingers out into every nook and cranny...and lodged itself deep into the subconscious...springing up unbidden and unwanted to suck the very joy out of summer.

And there was naught that I could do.

I had invited it in.

I had chosen so to do.

And, frankly, I had to see the whole thing through...

But during that time...those 2+ years of dancing with the devil...I, too, had succumbed.  I had gone dark...letting it fester within me.

(And don't get me wrong...I knew what I was doing.  I purposefully and knowingly chose this path. I  would do so again, in a heartbeat.  It was worth it.)

I had felt myself slip and slide down that slope, and done nothing to slow my fall.  Knowing as I did then but couldn't yet put into words, that I had to be "all in" in order to make it work.  Knowing that it had to be real.   Knowing that I had to force myself into genuinely caring, or I'd show my cards.

So the grim and gray and grimy seeped in.

Messages turned into conversations.

Days turned into weeks.

The infection took root.

And all too soon...all too quickly...everything beautiful that I had built my life into was fogged over.

Out of reach.

Out of view.

Out of sync.

All I knew was the pervasive fog that had settled in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's November now, and fall is here in full force.  Crisp, windy days play off of bitter, rain-soaked ones.  Leaves and acorns pelt my head every time I step out the front door.  And the nights bring fog rolling in across the roadways, swallowing up marvel and menace both, as we blindly make our way  home in the dark from this program or that. 

It comes up fast, or so it seems, in our neck of the woods.  A quick unfurling of distortion...softening the sharp edges and blending one thing into another and another and another...

...until there is just a wall of gray.

We drive along.  The sickly yellow beam of the foglight barely reaching a foot ahead.

Eyes narrowed.  The gas pedal barely engaged.  Nerves at the ready to spring into action and slam on the brake.  Concentration furrowing the brow as we both stare down at the sliver of road before us.

It's all we can see.

All we can make out.

A few feet...maybe less...of pavement in front of the hood.

We drive along.

Knowing full well that the fog hides dangers.

Knowing they are there...just beyond view...

Knowing there's nothing we can do to avoid them.

We stare down at that road with low-expectations.

We won't make it home anytime soon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

November is begun.

It's been months now, of settling into the comfort of the familiar.  Of wrapping ourselves back up in the beautiful patchwork quilt of the life I built for us.

Nature's reminder...the fog of fall nights...evokes the darkness that owned me so recently.

But the crisp sting of wind on my cheeks when I open the door each morning serves as counterpoint...reminding me that I am free.

There is contrast here, now.  Sharpness and details and saturation.  Sometimes it even clashes.  Colors at war with one another.  Softness brushing up against prickers. 

More, now, than I saw before...before the fog rolled in.

More, now, than I have seen these many, many years since first I stepped foot on the freedom trail.

It seems I've finally reached my destination.

It seems I'm finally free.

Little did I guess that all it would take is another full-immersion soaking in that pit of grime for me to finally shake myself loose of any and all responsibility, guilt, heartache, sympathy, empathy, etc...and lay to rest those demons of the past.

Little did I know that I needed to drown in that very fog, in order to finally step out into the light.

~~~