Thanks Heather! You all have been a great comfort through all of this. Not sure where I'd be without you. Probably would have just given my W everything and only see my D14 every other weekend. Even now, after all I have seen and KNOW about MLC, I still have a part of me that just can't understand how my W could have changed so much that she can't even think about what is best for her own kids. My poor D19 is so freaked out by how her mother is wanting to act like her "friend" instead of her mother. Just more of the same. Don't get me wrong, I'm not surprised anymore or even angry or upset. It's just that when it comes to something as permanent and binding as the final decree, it just makes something I know will hurt my D's, make any chance of ever having anything but a bad R with my ex, will make it that much harder for even my W if she ever does come out of her tunnel to ever undo the damage she has caused, the craziness just takes on such a permanence. Like it or not my w is the mother of my kids. Some day she will be grandmother to my grandkids and will never be totally out of my life or my family.
At one point when my w was really deep in her depression she said she could just leave me and the kids, go somewhere on her own (just like her dad) and never once look back or feel a bit of guilt. I chalked it up to her depression but now, I wish that was what she had done. Disappeared from all of our lives and left us alone. It would have hurt, I'm sure. But we would have gotten on with our lives without the crazy. Without my kids being forced to have their grandfather in their lives to hurt them. To no longer feel safe even when dealing with your own family. To me family means everything. To my W it's just a word to describe the people who are related to you. I guess when she has been so deeply hurt by her own father, family meant something different, something dangerous. She probably sees nothing wrong with how she is acting towards her kids since it's not nearly as bad as her dad treated her and now he is wanting to make up for all that. It's her turn to be selfish and she can always make up for it later.
This time I'm not spinning, not thinking "How can she do this?" . This time I'm thinking it's time to take the gloves off and do everything in my power to stop my W from doing any more harm to me or those I love! When my W gets my response to what she wants in the final decree, she is going to go threw the roof! It will be the final nail in the coffin of our M and there will be no coming back from it. I gave her every chance to do what is right, not what SHE wants for her own selfish reasons. To poke her head out of the MLC well long enough to see that it's not all about her. That getting a D isn't just leaving me behind but tearing a family apart and hurting so many other lives. She can't see this, I know that now. But that doesn't mean I can't and that i will just let her do it.
I don't know why she is getting worse. Maybe it's that she isn't getting what she thought living on her own. Maybe it's because she has been letting her father run her life. Maybe she is still angry because I tried to save our M instead of just saying she needs to do what she wants or that I'm not just falling apart without her. Who knows and it doesn't matter one bit. There is no hope that she will come out of her MLC in time to save my kids from the damage she is determined to inflict in the quest to "find her joy". I accept this now. I don't and never will understand it (not having an MLC myself) but I accept it. I don't hate her, I'm not angry either. I tried my best to DB, give her space and time and even support but none of that helped. (may have even made things worse!). Time to think about what I want and what I think is best for those I am here to love and protect and raise into adulthood. The rest is up to God and in some part to just how deep my W is in her fog.
