Gerda Finally Sees the Broken Fragments

[Gerda]

I really liked your Valentine, DnJ. I wrote a long reply but then I wanted to edit it and never even posted it. Must be on my computer somewhere.

I am writing to my DB friends to request a hug. I had such a horrifying day in court. We may be near a settlement and it's basically what I offered all along except I have to allow him to market the house in order to buy time and in order to get him down to reality about what he can actually get for it. I am hoping that by the time he is done with the marketing effort, I will have a refi in place. Like I said from the beginning of this nightmare, we can save all the money on lawyers and just skip to the end but he refused. So I spent the last year and a half getting beaten up and wasting money on lawyers. Lord did I make a lot of mistakes in my legal journey. I think we need a sticky for that, though again as I always say, you can't listen to anything here until you are ready to listen and that is usually after you already got burned.

I have a very terrible judge and I never filed motions or anything to bring my kids' story and my story into play, I just kept desperately trying to settle -- that is, after the year it took me to accept H wasn't going to drop the D and return. (Yeah, I know, I know.) But today H's L was up to his usual domination of everything and my L was silent so I started to fidget and then kept whispering to my L to say something. It was PTSD of the day I signed the bad agreement because my last L was silent that day too. The judge started yelling at me not to talk to my lawyer, and then later my lawyer told me that my fidgeting p!ssed her off and that my H was able to be more stoic. He said, "Judges like people who say yes." I couldn't believe it. I said, "You are there to advocate for me, and I was advocating for my children. I can't say yes just because the judge wants me to." This L is new to my case and didn't see the many days before this when I was still ad silent and my H stormed out of the court with his dyed-blond hair plugs flowing in the breeze or the many times he piped up -- and even today at one point he said, "Can I say something?" and started up before his L shouted, "NO!"

I really struggled today with the way that no one in that court room knows the truth, and that the actual narrative of what happened here or what is going on with my kids has never come into play because I got custody in the beginning. This man isn't even being required to pay child support until the house is closed on, the judge isn't even pushing for a child support agreement that follows the law!!!! His L has been so aggressive with their false narrative that the judge seems to actually believe it at this point and does literally nothing to try to make things fair for me and the kids, I think because she thinks I am secretly hiding money.

At one point I sort of blanked out, when we were waiting between times, and found myself standing next to H saying, "Why? Why? Why are you doing this?" I kind of woke up in that moment and he was looking at me with such violent hatred. I don't even remember what he said but it was something like, "You don't even know yourself, just get away from me, you don't know what you are talking about."

I made it out alive and we may be close to an agreement but I had to get battered on every side. My new L knows the law better but he couldn't really dig me out of what I signed, and he is a very cold person, so I certainly don't feel like he is protecting me much, or helping me be effective. But I guess it's almost over.

Today my Christian values drowned in a sea of anger and a longing for revenge. I am sure I will get past it but just for today, I am so mad that no one knows the truth about H.

I am collecting virtual hugs today. So be generous with those parentheses.

What I do when I feel like this is I go to my church and I literally lie on the altar in the dark and cry my head off. So here I go.