B stands for Bronco, BMW, blog

Some of you have been asking if there’s been any change in my legal situation lately. To put it short – no. To put it long, the man I’ve been separated from for 5 years now is still avoiding being served. And this continues to prevent me from moving back to Florida, “home,” as a friend put it, and back to the man I love.

Some of you know my love story, but there are still times I want to shout it from the rooftops how happy I am that my love came looking for me twenty years after we broke up the first time. My parents tried their hardest to keep him from me, and even though I won’t say that’s why we broke up, it certainly didn’t provide any incentive for us to try to stay together. Besides, I know that we wouldn’t be together today if we would have stayed together then. I feel now I can balance my grown-up responsibilities with the nearly overwhelming urge to spend every moment in his arms.

Today, there is someone else who seems to feel as entitled to run my life as they did, keeping us apart. When this person seems to lack the most control over his own life, he reaches out to try to control mine, like the dog he kicks when he’s had a bad day. And although I removed myself from his physical grasp five years ago, because we conceived a child together, I’m still legally tethered to him. He is the only reason I am not back in Florida this very moment.

I have gotten very depressed at the situation recently, but pulled myself back up. I’ve also contemplated a few bizarre schemes to try to move to Florida with my children before I actually make it to court one of these days. But I’m ok. He can keep me from him for now, but I won’t let the sadness my ex is trying to create overshadow the joy I get thinking of holding my lover’s hand, which seems to light up the world around me. The smile I get just hearing his voice, his laugh.

And baby, just know that you are so worth the wait.

Yeah, you’ve heard some of this before, but I want to be free, dammit

Ok friends, I’m giving this a shot.  Here’s the scoop:

I separated 4 1/2 years ago from the man that I married.  It was a violent ending.  Though he denies it, I have the strength today to say out loud that he tried to kill me, to say it without shame or embarassment, or self-blame for allowing myself to stay in the situation that long.  He did not show up for court three years back for the custody and support hearing of his daughter, and due to the history of domestic violence, he was given supervised visitation only.  He has had all this time to take me to back court to reverse this but has not.  He tells my daughter often about how good things will be when he no longer has to be supervised, blaming me consistently for the way things are, making me look like the bad guy to her.  And in over three years since that decree, he has not *once* called for a visitation.  I bring the kids to his parents for visits, certain holidays, extra birthday parties, and occasionally he drops by their house.  For the record, his ordered child support is based off estimated minimum wage earnings, despite having a business degree and working in the oil fields.  And I’m lucky when I see that, since it’s not a priority to him to pay regularly.

I filed for the actual divorce on May 1st of this year, after being separated for four years.  The plan was to wait until Amy was old enough to be aware of a dangerous situation before voluntarily returning to court, just in case a judge did decide to remove the visitation restriction on the grounds that there’s been no violence since the last court date (of course not, since there’s been no visitation).  My FIL handed him the waiver to be served on May 19.  He has refused to sign and return it.  The first time I spoke to him in years, I asked him point blank if he had returned it a month after receiving it, and that ended up being a half-hour fight in the parking lot of Texas Burger in Buffalo, Texas.  Fortunately, my FIL witnessed it all.  He told  me straight to my face that if I didn’t request for the judge to remove supervision, to help him, he would make this as difficult as he possibly could.

So here I am four and a half months later, trying to figure out what to do next.  His myspace lists him in Houston (or Alabama?), though from what I last knew, he is living in one of his parents’ rental homes in Ft Worth.  It would appear he is self-employed, working as a contractor, because the state of Texas hasn’t been able to garnish his wages in a couple years.  He has an erratic schedule that apparently he can choose himself, making it close to impossible to determine when he is home.  I had ask my ILs if they could please let me know when he is home, but understandably, they have chosen to stay out of the situation.  I respect that, and I’m still very grateful for all they have done for me and my children.

I want this to be over.  I want my freedom.  My ex knows that this is the last thing he has over me, something I want.  He knows it will be his last shot at controlling me this lifetime.  And he also knows if he did go to court, he would have to tell the truth and admit that it’s not my fault, that he chose the shape of his relationship with his daughter. 

What I’m not going to do is ask my daughter to get in the middle.  She asked him to call more this summer, and he did, for a couple weeks, but that’s dropped off also.  Two weeks after she started school he finally called to congratulate on making it through her first week of her Freshman year, despite the fact that she’s in 8th grade.  My daughter is so desperate for his attention that she quickly overlooked it and tried to press on the conversation to lighter, shallow things, but I was livid when I found out.

He doesn’t love me, and has been with his girlfiend for a couple years.  This is just out of childish spite.  If there is anyone who can convince him to be a grownup and let Amy and me go, I’m asking please.  I’m pretty sure this is futile, but with a wonderful man in my life now, the last thing I want is to be held hostage figuratively by this man. 

*Shrug* 

Oh, well.  If nothing, it felt good to write about where I am right now.

Something unexpected happened

I have fallen love.

I never thought it would happen again.  I thought I had my chance in the past and screwed it up, or that I was destined to live alone in exchange for something I had done earlier, or even in a past life.  I was ok with that for the most part – horny occasionally – but still ok with being the strange cat lady years after both kids went off on their own. 

But someone found me on myspace, someone that crossed my mind here and there.  The last time I saw him was the day before my 18th birthday, half a lifetime ago.  The last time I kissed him was 20 years ago.  And there he was.  He was getting out of a relationship and saw me on a mutual friend’s list.  We emailed back and forth for a bit, and little by little, the conversations got more serious, more intimate.  Then he called me.

He lives still in Florida, where I went to high school, went through puberty, met my ex-husband, and did a lot of things I’m not necessarily proud of.  I’ve only visited the area once in the past ten years, and that was just for a moment when I picked up my baby sister and her family, and then stopped at my Grammie’s for lunch.  My sister moved back on Christmas Day, if you remember, and I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a beach vacation.

It seems like I have much more incentive now.  I can’t get him out of my mind.  Since I am that kind of geek, I checked my cell phone, in the past week we’ve spent almost 24 hours on the phone to each other.  No, I’m not kidding.  I don’t even think we were on the phone that much when we dated twenty years ago.

He reminded me of how we met.  I had forgotten. I had pushed a lot of those memories out of the way because my ex-husband was always disturbed by the thought that there were others before him.  So I tried to erase that part.  But the truth is, he was my first love.  Which makes this even stranger.  This kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life, does it?  This is something for Oprah or Montel, or Disney, right? 

Imagine how much twenty years can change a person.  I may still be as goofy and fun as I was then, but I’m not nearly as impulsive or selfish.  I have two children that are my top priorty, and he has three.  Yes, I had to laugh at the fact that he’s raising three daughters, considering my father once threatened to kill him.  And I wonder what my father would think of him now.  Deep down, I think he would be happy for me finding something so wonderful again.

I fight a lot with that nagging little brat deep inside of me, the one that tells me that I don’t deserve to be happy, that I’m supposed to suffer.  Or maybe it’s not my own voice I hear, but my mother’s.  Well, screw her and her voice.  I deserve this.  I’m happy like I don’t know I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I think it’s because I’m ok with me deep inside, ok enough to share that with someone else.  And I found a wonderful man, intelligent, creative, funny, and very freaking sexy, that can appreciate who I am for real.  I had my hesistations because of who he was in the past, and some of the things he’s done, but he’s not holding my past against me so it wouldn’t be fair if I did.  I see who he is right now, and I’m in love with him.