Brave Little Gerda, So Chilled She Could Not Speak

[Rita]

Sjohn and Gordie, thank you for the visit and checking up on me.

The X-Mas was nice. I invited my H and made a meal from the country of his birth on X-Mas Eve. I went to 5 pm mass with my daughter and a midnight mass alone and at the latter I felt so close to God that I just stood out on the city street after listening to the bells through the dark and crying with joy. The next day I took my kids to mass again even though H would not go (and lectured against it) and my son even was so happy and peaceful though he was on his phone for most of it. I took them out to Chinese food after and we were all happy.

Everyone liked the gifts I got, I did everything myself of course though my H got the kids each one thing. I got one gift from my H, who bought me a toaster -- at least I think it was for me, there was no indication of that but it was sitting there unopened. Our toaster is broken and we have been using a rubber band to make it work. It was really a gift for him as he eats toast everyday and I imagine he'll take it if he moves out, but that's okay, I wanted a new one too.

Anyway it was pretty nice except for him giving my D an old iPad of his, which he knew was my worst nightmare, and when I said it was for her to use only with him there, as I didn't want to have to police her use of it, he gave a long lecture about how he trusted her. But he is never ever with my kids, so it is like handing me a big problem. And indeed in the last few days it has been a battle with her and also with my S who keeps taking it to use too.

We acted almost like a normal family and on the third day he even said, "Don't wait for me for dinner" and had me buzz the back of his neck with his barber buzzer like a wife does.

So it was predictable that the next day he would be gone. He drove somewhere in the car, supposedly to work on his dissertation in another big city with good colleges about four hours from ours, though I said I wanted to go somewhere with the kids. So I am trapped here the whole holiday, can't even go on day trips.

But mostly all I do is run to court for my other business situation, including visits to the police when one of the people I am suing came to the business and harassed me, then the sales tax people came to see if they were going to shut us down but I was fortunately not open, back and forth to court, lawyer calls, brokers, just attack after attack all alone and many evil e-mails from my H about how he wanted to go to the business to take things to sell since I am keeping him in poverty by refusing to sell our house.

I don't engage and I keep trying to be kind but I did decide that we should try to be mature and make a division about car usage so I don't go through this again on a holiday. He has not paid for anything with the car as far as repairs or insurance since BD1 or before, and never helps to park it or anything like that, but doesn't use it that often either. But now he got a part-time job that he needs it for and has been using it. He plans to quit his other pt job, leaving me and kids with no insurance. I had to pay him back for the insurance, but at least we had some good insurance which I need as a cancer survivor! When I asked him about this he said he had to think about himself for once. Anyway, I am going to paste below the exchange we had about the car. I am pretty detached now I guess, it only hurt me for a few seconds and then I just felt sorry for him. But still it will be nice to hear you all recognize MLC in action.

Gerda wrote:
We need to work out the car situation. We were going to do two day trips and maybe go to (my cousin)’s and we are stuck here the whole vacation even for day trips. We can’t go anywhere as an overnight just from Monday night to Wednesday morning even if D9 didn’t have school on Wednesday.

My proposal if you don’t want to buy my half of the car and have it all to yourself is that I have use of the car on kids’ school holidays and every other weekend. This will give you use of the car way more than half the time and will allow both of us to make plans without uncomfortable conversations. I am fine with zip car for IKEA or whatever but I can’t use it for leaving town. When I work in (area he is working in), I just bike from the train but I assume there are Zip car drop off points all over (that area).

H wrote:
It’s 40 mins by car for me to get to work, and it’s an hour and half by any form of public transportation, and since I have had no regular use of the car in years, I’ll need it to get to work until the need to use it get to work dissolves. The alternative is quitting my job. I wish another path — besides my car use Mon- Thur— was possible, but another path is not possible. I am either forced by your plan / vision for the car to quit, or I manifest my plan / vision for the car. My vision, incidentally, is one which enables me to keep a job of which the salary helps me to me meet about 50 percent of my costs for food. I meet the other 50 percent of costs for food, including my costs for, say, toothpaste and vitamins and socks, etc, by monthly loans from (the godfather who is funding his divorce and paid everything for them to go to Rome in Nov and see all the saints, etc.).

Then a short time later he wrote again –

H wrote:

Are you blind to how very not nice it is and how very frustrating it is
when you claim — as you claim as a regular phenomenon in our shared
existence — to need the car EXACTLY at a point when I (humbly gently
congenially) ask permission to use the car? And are you blind to fact
that EXACTLY when I ask for it and EXACTLY when you claim to need it,
most of the time you ACTUALLY never even use the car.

This phenomenon, this outmoded repetition, leaves me with the feeling
that I never did not feel about you and which ended our marriage: that
you will — even despotically will — to never lose control of the things
you own with me, including kids. I cannot abide in precisely these sorts
of grotesque deranged conversations anymore — in which you muscularly and
unilaterally claim ownership and authority over something we own
together.

Your email to me this morning was frankly arrogant and expressive of
decades moral and marital malignancy.

Please ask your lawyer to call my lawyer to come to a conclusion about
the car. You don’t want to talk. You want to control. And I only want to
talk, thru mediation and not talk to you anymore.
- H


Gerda wrote:
I’m sorry you are so upset. I would rather not use the car at all than
argue; and certainly I don’t have the money to pay a lawyer to divide the
use of the car.

If you are proposing for me to have use of the car Fri-Sun and (his work)
holidays, that sounds great.

If you don’t want me to use the car, I will make other arrangements for
now.

- Gerda