Brave Little Gerda Knows More Now

[Gerda]

DnJ, Kml and Cardinal -- Thanks for these excellent message, love the reflections and insight and just hearing from you, my friends. It means a lot in this lonely journey! Things with the Was-band are astonishingly stuck, no matter how many offers I make to chisel. His L started to threaten me with the usual bullying e-mails blaming me for D not wanting to see H and saying that withholding our D12 means they will tell the court and withhold child support -- BUT HE DOESN'T PAY CHILD SUPPORT!

So I filed a petition in Family Court to change custody. I am theoretically not supposed to go that route til divorce is done but I have a hearing for child support this summer finally (long queue from covid, I filed almost a year ago for that!) so I got on the queue for this too. I wanted to wait on this to settle divorce but I have to protect D12. My sweet little innocent girl, sweet to everyone and who loves God since she was very little (used to say as she was swinging high on the swing that she was going to touch God with her toes) now says, "Don't call him my dad. He is the f-ing devil," but she says the full f word. Once she opened the door to that boundary with him, it's a flood of anger and clarity.

I have so much more to tell you all but no time. I started a flip project with a friend and it's so fun but many things going wrong, and I am still working many teaching jobs at the moment (til I can make enough in flipping to phase out other work) so I am drowning even more than usual in work, and then this endless stupidity with the D, so so so pointless. It's all just because he won't accept a payment plan, wants to show us all that he is the boss by insisting on payment in full or forcing us to sell. So I am stuck in this purgatory til the economy improves enough for me to refi or til he accepts the payment plan or is ordered to (I have an open motion asking for that). Sadly this custody issue may give me a little leverage -- remember in the early days, he asked for 100% custody and dropped it to visitation only when I asked for guardian -- but I am trying to be clear about what kids need and not weaponize this custody sitch in any way. Hopefully somehow he will settle and we can deal with custody as a change in family court instead of more endless D and more fees for his evil lawyer.