Brave Little Gerda, So Chilled She Could Not Speak

[Gerda]

Woke up very early with a raging migraine and couldn't find any advil so I had to go downstairs to get some. H was up and said, "Hi," when I came in. I could not control myself and said, "Don't say hi to me, you've become so evil I --" and then cut myself off. He snickered. I went upstairs with my advil.

Thinking all night about what you said, DnJ, and about the other perspectives I got.

I am always cleaning up my H's messes. Now my only choice is to try to once again find a way to feed his voracious appetite for money or otherwise either come up with the money to pay for the child advocate or to pay him. I haven't spoken to my dad yet, but my only option would be if he is willing to dig into the money i would inherit one day, a very uncomfortable conversation. He is 91 so it's not totally absurd but it's awkward and he does not like to part with money.

And this is all assuming he will take money in order to end this quickly and will give up on the kids.

Or I can just wait to see what will happen, hoping that he won't be able to afford to keep going in this way. But it seems like the court in my state is incredibly harsh and my judge is incredibly horrible so it could be that because I am refusing to do a "reasonable" custody, they will make me pay for the GAL.

But maybe that's what you mean,DnJ. How far am I willing to go?

In his mind, it's me who is weaponizing the children. In mine, it's him. But neither kid wants to have to leave our home and neither one knows that his entire plan is to liquidate our home, changing our lifes completely because where we live is so expensive and we can't just pick up and move, even if I ended up with a chunk of money from our house sale, it would not cover even a 1-bedroom in my city.

I guess I will talk to my dad and find out if he is willing to give me inheritance money in advance instead of spending it on a GAL. If he is not, I guess I have to dig in but then my dad would still have to be willing to fund a GAL because I can't come up with it. I am short thousands of dollars on mortgage again this week.

I need my H to move out so I can at minimum rent out part of our apartment to pay bills.

Maybe I need to play hardball and say that we have to do that and I will pay him some of what I earn doing it and otherwise I will let the house go into foreclosure. But that would only screw me too.

It's funny how you said, "now you know how far H is willing to go." Because I still don't. I still keep thinking that something will wake him up. And for me the hardest part is that he thinks what he is doing is righteous and in God's will, and that every move I make shows what a controlling horrible person I am. He has convinced others of this to the point that they are paying for his D lawyer. There is something about that that destroys my confidence. I can't figure it out but somehow in the face of his perversion of reality, I can't feel confident in what I know to be true about this. I can't even figure out how to phrase it to him -- e.g., "H, what you are choosing is... I have to choose...." I don't even know how to fill that sentence in.

And underneath it all, to keep feeling that I am standing for this marriage. I don't understand how I am supposed to play this horrible game and still feel in my heart that I am standing, they are two opposites. I need to reread all the old posts you and Gordie and Job have written on this topic to me. But maybe now it's a little different.