I have been lurking under a rock the last week or two after the judge's court attorney wrote to ask that we send her one pdf of the last three motion sequences. She actually thought I would do this jointly with H's L and she thought it could be done quickly. It was a GIANT task. I had each document in a google drive -- e.g., Exhibit N, correspondence with broker, and that one exhibit was like 15 files, and there were Exhibits A to N for each sequence! And there was my OSC, his OSC, my response to his OSC, my response to his response to my OSC! And all with exhibits. I just couldn't face it. Trying to put together gifts and a nice X-mas for the kids alone, finish my work for the semester, and that hanging over my head, along with just this generalized anxiety from this endless quarantine and never ever having even a second to myself, even if I stay up til 2 in the morning, my teen son is lurking about, asking for food, coming in and out, finally wants to talk to me, etc. (I did manage to get the gifts together, even got S a snowboard on sale and he was so happy in between his child-of-MLCer sorrow/rage that he gets at holidays.)
Finally two days ago I decided to print every single document out again and make a giant hard copy folder and then scan the whole dang folder. Had to get a new toner and nine million pages of paper, and then of course when I finally bit the bullet and started, the toner ran out, I pulled out the new one and discovered they had given me the wrong one! So I had to put it off another day and get my spine back on to try again.
Finally printed it all out, dishes piling high and the house a sea of mess all around me on the floor by the printer that I keep in a cabinet. Then I had to use a pdf app I found that would number it and then I made a table of contents for it by going through the whole thing again. The whole thing was over 400 pages.
I am at this point pretty detached from the emotion of it but it's still rather staggering to see all the insanity that H and his L committed with total impunity. I really want to avoid trial but I just can't imagine that if the trial judge (it will be a different judge) actually read any of these documents, s/he could not see that this whole thing is ABSURD and that it all could have been avoided since I was offering a 50-50 split since day one. I have an exhibit of all the settlement offers I sent him or that friends or biz partners attempted to broker, in addition to all the offers for mediation. There were OVER A DOZEN. The only thing that is keeping this going is that H wants a lump sum and doesn't seem to understand that a judge could agree with me that the kids should stay in a home that covers their housing costs and lets them walk to school and church and keep the same friends. E.g., he could end up getting NO money til 2027, or he can take my offer for big payouts every year til I refinance when rents are back to normal.
Our judge has never read anything I wrote, never paid any attention to any motion or exhibit. So it may have all been for naught to create such a clean and organized package. But while I was working on this in between hours staring into space unable to face it, H's L sent the judge the most shoddy version of it, with nothing labeled and the whole thing a big mess in three different files. When I said I would be sending the complete packet shortly, he protested that that was all he had ever received, even though both he and the court had access to the entire Google drive since July. It is not possible for that man to respond to anything in a normal reasonable way. He is always protesting, always lying, always looking for an angle. Just like his client.
In another development -- I have written before about how much I struggled with D11's middle school romance-style love with H, how my feelings ranged from annoyance to a sort of weird hatred, a feeling that she was betraying me. I even spoke to my pastor about this. (One thing he told me which was great was that his father was always fixing cars and told him, "Son, you can't fix the engine when it's hot.") But lately she has been telling me she doesn't want to see H anymore. She doesn't want to have to drive back and fourth four hours each way every other weekend to the place he moved. But she is saying that even if he lived nearby, she doesn't want to see him anymore, she wants a break from him. She vacillates about it but mostly she talks about how she doesn't want to hurt him because she is his favorite person but she just doesn't feel comfortable there and doesn't think he really loves her because of all he has done and is doing, esp trying to sell our home. And because of all the body shaming he does, though she thinks she has now made it clear to him that he can't do that anymore. I think that his MLCness and NPDness is not something that even a child doesn't sense after a while. I asked her if I have said things to make her feel this way and she said definitely not. I have corrected some lies about the house -- he had told her I stole all his money and refused to give him his share, etc., so she does know that I offered to pay him his equity slowly so that we could stay in our house and that he refused and is insisting on selling it now without a plan to pay for their housing. But other than that I was happy, she said that he trash talks me all the time but that she notices I don't do that. What a relief and proof that thoughts do not ALWAYS appear on an expressive face!
I haven't been posting lately, just can't bring myself to explain, but I am writing all this here because it seems like hearing these stories of others is helpful, and lent is coming so I will be absent for that. I think it is helpful also to notice that even someone like me, full of faith and not bitter, pretty detached by fighting for my kids, has days of intense darkness and paralysis. All you can do is keep walking, even if you can only move one toe one inch. Just keep walking forward and trusting that you should do all you can with the gifts you have been given (e.g., I am smart, a hustler, business-savvy, so I can use those skills) but after you do all you can, you leave the rest to God and trust that whatever happens will have a purpose and a meaning to it that is bigger than you. The other thing I do is read about what women and children are going through all over the world and then I am even a little ashamed that I would worry about my sitch.
Lastly I have been thinking a lot about something I saw on a Ted talk by Sarah Cooper, where she said that whatever you are doing sneakily, whatever you are shirking work for, that is what you should be doing for a living. So I am looking very seriously into the house flip idea, and I started a program for youth in prison and that is going pretty well already. I am doing that as a volunteer but I am just trusting that it will lead to something. I worked so hard as an adjunct this year and still lost my health insurance and got paid almost nothing so I think I need to make a change, do more of my creative work and make a living doing things I like.
OK, S too is demanding something so gotta run.
I believe I will see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage. Be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.
