Brave Little Gerda Passes Through the Door

[Gerda]

Hello out there. Probably just to DnJ; you are the only one who ever posts on my thread! I hope you are well up in the frozen north looking out at some clear star night.

I have been struggling a lot mentally/emotionally these past months. My trial is in two weeks. H has been very busy. He filed two motions in the last four months. Judge Two (who made me long for Judge One) ignored the first one so he filed another. This last one he filed about a month before our trial, asking judge to put me in jail.

I've been without child support since H filed in 2018 and obviously had no help before then. I've wasted so much time and money and done everything I could to get free, offered to him on day one the very thing we have a court order to do, but which he won't do. This trial is totally pointless, and all this time has been spent on nothing. I've tried so many times to settle and it's like talking to a wall. Or an alligator? He doesn't want to settle. I just can't figure out what he thinks he can gain from trial. I don't think he understands what is actually possible and imagines that somehow he'll finally get "justice," but the issues actually referred to trial are very few. One of them is that I should have to refile our taxes and not give 1099's for rental income. This is literally on the directions of the 1099's with the IRS. There is nothing to argue about! So there is just not that much that can happen. I think H owes his lawyer about 200K that could have been used for my kids' college education. It's a burnt out wasteland.

I know intellectually that H can't do anything to me. He already did everything. Nothing can really change from this trial. The property is already settled, H just keeps refusing to appraise it so we can do a buy out. The worst outcome is judge giving me only 90 days to refi and giving H credit for some legal bills. The best outcome is giving me 6-12 months to refi and credit for my legal bills. Either way, I have to get child support, it's the law! This is a third judge (referee), and apparently he is much more fair than Judge One and Two. And since it's a trial, the judge will have to actually read all our papers and review the finances and DETERMINE CHILD SUPPORT, all things that I have never had from a judge before. (Also he is a man, and I am convinced my two women judges are the most brutal to women, trying to show they don't favor them.)

Either way once the trial is over, it's kind of unlikely H will keep filing these motions, as he will no longer entertain the insane hope that I will be ordered to cover all his legal bills.

So this is unpleasant and the endless motions make me feel horrible and always under attack (and wasting money!). But it's not like anything really that awful can happen. Losing my house would be really stupid and sad but it's not death. And everything else will be over. And yet, I am terrified all the time. I wake up constantly at night with heart racing and crazy thoughts, and find my brain is going over and over the same thoughts before I realize what is happening. I am very inefficient in my work, and just foggy and weird feeling all the time. I start crying out of nowhere a lot, and am constantly catching myself feeling this primordial terror and then trying to remind myself that nothing really is going to happen to me.

I am dreading being cross examined for four days by that evil evil lawyer of H. I am dreading having to hear his voice. (Still Zoom trials here.) I have no shred of feeling for the marriage anymore, obviously, no sadness about it ending, quite the opposite I just want to be free of this endless abuse-by-proxy and be able to live without a demon on my shoulder. I know that the trial is a doorway to that freedom. And yet I am terrified all the time. I'm still working as hard as ever to keep food on the table, still working on my art and my house stuff when time and money permit, doing all the college app stuff with S17, trying to navigate D13's 13-ness and even taking dance class finally again (and realizing that my body does not work like it used to!), but all the time I am carrying this dark shadow and just burst into tears even walking down the street sometimes. And thought I try to stay clear of it all, it's hard with S17 working at H's restaurant, and both S and D seeing him more and Soulmate Three always there and my kids getting all pretzled and confused when they return home, the damage just always is in full view, always raw and always local. And I have no contact with H at all, but there is this little pipeline always leaking poisoned oil into my brain.

So DnJ, I guess what I am doing is crying on your shoulder and asking for a few pats on the back.