Gerda Finally Sees the Broken Fragments

[Gerda]

The promised cut and paste for DnJ --

I was talking about my jealousy of your kids' clear-headedness and ability to set boundaries and stand up for what is right and what they want/need. I am usually doing this on my own into not even a void -- I have a three-headed monster of insane cruel narcissistic H, the embodiment of his damaged soul in the form of his lawyer -- the world's nastiest and I am realizing quite stupid, greediest lawyer -- and a judge who is known in my city as the one divorce court judge who does not care about children or women. (As a woman herself, with an all-women courtroom --even the bailiff -- she is a particularly vicious misogynist, trying to show she doesn't pick favorites with women, no matter what their story is.) And then I have two kids who are so damaged that my efforts to heal them are SLOOOOOOOOOW.

Things are in a way much easier with S14, who sees and understands and is like your D, no point in reconnecting with a ghost who hurt you so much. He still struggles mightily with his emotional issues but is way better than last year and has basically no contact with H except for some CRAZY exchanges that happened during Lent and that one day I have to tell you about. With D11 (now 11!), she loves her dad in a weird middle school romance way that I find really disturbing. He is reckless and unsafe (pandemic choices that are shocking, vaping, drinking and emotionally abusive to her, talks about me horribly -- that I lie, steal his money, keep them apart, etc -- the whole time they are together) but she can't see it. Or rather, she sees it sort of but not enough to protect herself or set boundaries. She has a lot of learning disabilities and though she has a high level of emotional maturity, she literally can't understand many things people say. She struggles particularly with nonfiction in school (science, social studies, current events) and it takes me HOURS to help her understand that kind of school work. This crosses over into the world of H, where she doesn't know how to interpret what he is saying/doing. And it's not that I think I have to justify myself or get her approval on parenting choices but only that I want her to protect herself. She is afraid to even tell him basic things -- e.g., don't comment on her body, or no, I don't want to travel every other weekend to a city five hours a way if you move there. Or please don't vape when I am in the room/car. Or please don't talk about my mom for two hours straight when I say to stop. I have her in therapy finally so I am hoping this will help. But for now I have to battle my own feelings at times that she is betraying me. I know it's not true, I am only talking about interior feelings. I constantly have to discuss visitation issues and other issues with her because H feeds her so many lies, and sometimes I get so angry inside with her for not seeing the truth, and then have to conquer my own face and tone of voice to hide that anger so she won't feel bad. It's crazy making.

I still haven't caught you up with the details but I think now that Grace and I are IRL friends and talk on the phone at times, I got spoiled about how to catch up and it seems too daunting.

Also I notice after being away from the boards that there are two impulses to visiting them, at least for me. One is to get support from friends and provide support to them (and to new friends) but another is a sort of sad voyeurism, like binge watching a sad Netflix series. I have a lot of work to do and in free time I have my artistic projects to do, anything that pulls me from that, no matter how worthy, needs to be limited. So I know for myself I need to be very picky about reading threads, as much as I would like to help newcomers. I think updating my own thread from time to time and visiting the threads of the friends I already have here has to be my future plan, if I don't cut myself off from the boards entirely....