Thanks for the tips, U. X hasn't replied yet and it's been a week-- posting about it worked last time, so let's see if he responds today after I post this.
X just picked up S2 in his track car. His hobby for the past ten years has been drifting, a sport where you slide a powerful, low, loud car around a race track and burn up your tyres in the process. Fun, but very expensive. I've seen cars blow up before. I'm shocked he managed to fit a car seat into the car-- it's not exactly built for comfort. Again, not exactly a dangerous or neglectful parenting choice, just something I'd consider inappropriate for a two-year old.
Last night I had a terrifying dream. I was staying over at X-ILs' house in a dark room. FIL was shouting, ranting, screaming in another room. He then went completely silent. I heard footsteps and my door was opened. Silence again until I felt my bedsheets being lifted and a large male presence sliding in beside me. Panicked, I tried to slip out of bed and run away. Then I woke up.
Two stories for context:
1) When I was 16, I moved out of home and billeted with a family in a major city so I could train for swimming. The parents were nice people who got blackout drunk every night. One night, they were drinking with a male friend who had come for dinner. I went to bed and woke up to loud voices right outside my bedroom door. The wife was arguing with the man. Both were drunk but the man extremely so. I can't remember what was said, but I stood with my hand on the doorknob holding the door shut for what felt like hours. Completely petrified. Then suddenly I heard a fist connecting with flesh. The wife started wailing for her husband. She opened my door and told me to run. I went to her daughter's room at the other end of the house and we huddled in bed together. I didn't sleep again that night and didn't make it to training the next morning at 5am. I was punished by the coach for not making it. The wife apologised to me the next day. She had a puffy black eye. I'm still not sure exactly what happened but I can make a guess that she caught him attempting to enter my room.
2) At Christmas one year, X and I travelled to his sister's place for lunch. We arrived to find his mother preparing a roast lamb in the kitchen and weeping. She told us flatly that FIL had 'one of his blowups' and walked out the door yelling that he wasn't coming back. I was shocked but X and his sister seemed nonchalant. It was a tense atmosphere with MIL on edge. About an hour later, FIL walked back in the door. Smiling, beaming, joking and jolly as if nothing had happened. There was no explanation and it was never even acknowledged. Everyone brushed it under the rug. MIL put on a brave face and went back to catering to FIL's every need and demand. It was bizarre to me but even more bizarre that it seemed normal to them.
Just wanted to journal a bit this morning. It's not really material to my situation other than to remind me how lucky I am to have escaped such a dysfunctional family and that I can break the cycle of abuse for my son.
