Wounds Beneath the Surface

[Lenneth]

I wasn’t sure where to put this.  I settled on Health Issues because it is technically related to my mental and emotional health.  There was about two weeks between starting to write this and finishing it, so if you see time discrepancies in the writing, that’s why.

 

 



So there are a few things I want to establish/get out of the way before I start actually getting into anything.  I do want to say and share this stuff, but I don't want people who decide to read it thinking I'll lash out or be mean if they say anything that might be a different thought or view about something in my grand epic.  That's honestly the best thing anyone can share.  I'm writing about events leading up to my sitting here typing all of this out and yeah...that's totally gonna be influenced by my personal feelings and framed by the events leading me here.  I will absolutely strive to be aware of all that, but I'm only human and even when I'm upset or don't like hearing it, people outside of a situation can have thoughts and insights those stuck in the middle of it may not have or may not consider.  So I'm not worried about anything anyone might say to me about how I handled this or that, how something I said maybe wasn't the best way to communicate an idea, or the role another person played doesn't seem as worthy of my description or thoughts about it as is implied by my account of anything.  So if you just read and move on, thank you.  I do appreciate you taking the time.  If you read and comment, I am also thankful and anything said I will value.  I may not agree with it, but if I can't open up to another perspective on anything and just want people following me around and nodding yes to everything, that's not exactly mature or helpful either.  I do want to consider any thoughts anybody may have.

 

Which brings me to mention this:  I seriously, legitimately have absolutely no idea how long this will wind up being.  I decided to write it, I sat down a few minutes ago to start typing it, and there is no structure or plan I have for how I'll present it.  I literally have no idea what will go on between here and when it's finally over.  If it is ridiculously long, I apologize.  If anyone decides a solid, "Too long.  Did not read," I can totally understand that.  I have a bad habit of being overly verbose when I launch into something I'm passionate about, in a good way or bad way.  Life's also got that funny habit of discovering our free moments when we aren't looking and finding things so toss at those moments.  I appreciate anyone and everyone regardless of how much of this they read or at what pace.  Thank you for giving me any time you may have.

 

I would like to express, up front, that my writing and my account of certain things will likely be colored by my feelings about the subject.  I had been letting bits and pieces of that eek their way out in some other comments I was submitting in other places across the forum, and it was suggested to me it would be better, not just for the participants of the forum, but for myself as well, to dial that back and find a better place to lay it all out and allow people the choice to engage with my thoughts and words rather than dumping feelings and ideas into more publicly open locations and potentially being misunderstood, or injecting negativity (or outright animosity) into places not suited for that type of exchange.  Despite having apologized for those incidents and being told life moves forward as long as we can learn before taking the next step, I am still sorry for that and any feelings it may have caused.

 

If it doesn't seem my being transgender is necessarily pertinent, that won't surprise me.  Everything circling how I'm feeling right now, and the events leading to it, are connected, it's not always readily obvious.  My transgender identity, and events or words directed by it or towards it, are actually more relevant at the later end of the events I've been going through.  The connection is there though.  I don't know if I specifically have to include the connection to anything I post for it to be allowed, but if you're going through this wondering how that aspect of it has anything to do with what you're reading, it will come up.

 

I don't want to upset, bother, impugn, trivialize, marginalize, disregard, disrespect, upset, or insult anyone reading my words and the overreaching story.  And yes, I had more words I could have used there.  I mentioned I could go on for a while.  It's a gift.  One my partner will sardonically hand me a thesaurus over or link to one if we're in a chat program.  Larger point being, I do not know everyone's story or where they have come from.  I do not know what everyone wakes up to or faces in their lives day to day.  I don't believe anything I will say is likely to trigger or prove problematic for anyone, and I will do my best to be careful in choosing my words, but please understand that nothing in this entire "grand adventure" is meant to cause anyone any pain or revive any negativity in the lives of those reading this.  If something does, or if you, my intrepid readers, feel I could have expressed, or included anything in a more constructive, or less triggering manner, please let me know so any future additions I may make will take that into account.

 

If you recall that bit a few paragraphs back about not really knowing the structure this will take, I will also ask that you bear with it as you read should you not understand exactly how the narrative progresses.  As I really just want to dive in and start writing, it's not just likely, it's rather probable that I may make a comment or jump abruptly to a different idea during the course of everything.  I promise I'll try to keep an eye on that, but I've been told that it a statistical probability by multiple people close to me when reading anything I've written on a personal level.  My partners have mentioned, more times than I can count, I tend to lapse into repeating myself when I am overly passionate about something.  And while it's not exactly "bad," I've been told it's distracting and can obscure the point I'm trying to make, or the direction I'm trying to go, with my narrative.  My partner has even threatened to get the cat's spray bottle and use it when I start looping singular thoughts.  Out of love though!  Don't worry.

 

I believe that covers the things I was concerned about.  I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm prone to feeling like that about everything.  My partner counted the number of times I made sure my keys were in my purse between shutting the door and getting down stairs to the lobby once. Something like 3 or 4 times over like 2 minutes and maybe 150ft.  At least I  knew I had my keys?  So here we go I suppose.

 

--------

 

I'm going to roll with the unconvential style of those writers telling a story, regardless of the medium in which it's presented, introduced at the beginning with the end of it.  Not so much a, "what happens next?" as a, "and how did it end up here?"  Sort of like Columbo.  Tangentially at least.  I always loved Peter Falk.  But those stories were never about who committed the murder, they were always about the charming, seemingly bumbling detective figuring that part out in generally short order and walking the audience through the steps taken to prove it.  This isn't as grand as that, but the concept is the same and somet things I want to highlight as I go.

 

Bluntly speaking:  As I sit here typing this, I will be moving from Florida to Massachusetts to live with one of my partners.  And while I am very happy with that opportunity and the option to do so, the reason for my needing to move is because my mother bought a house near the end of the lease for the one we were renting, took both of my children, told me I was not invited and she will never let me live there, told me I would only interact with my boys at her discretion, and after the lease was up I needed to figure out what to do becasue I was an adult and needed to start handling things like one.  Now here's the disclaimer.  And this is important.  Before anyone thinks something legally nefarious or shady is taking place, there is a quite solid, legal, and valid reason my mother is able to take the children and have the power to make that decision.  I will get into that as I move through everything.  Second disclaimer.  One of the fundamental reasons she cited as a guiding factor in the decisions she made, as a whole, is absolutely, irrefutably, unquestiongly, unarguably, undeniably, completely provably (toss in any other words if you want to, but I think you get what I'm saying) as a response to actions, choices, and words taken, made, and used by me.  So please understand as I lay everything out, I am painfully aware of my contributions to the situation I find myself in.  If it sounds like I am not acknowledging or connecting that to the events I discuss, please forgive me.  There are things I bear responsibility for in the road I've traveled on to arrive here in this moment.  That knowledge, and pain it's caused, will be with me forever.  I saw some quote earlier and can't remember the exact wording of it, but the point it made was, once you hurt someone, you may repair things with them.  They may love you and to be with or around you.  They may smile and experience joy with, and for, you.  But that hurt, accepted and forgiven as it may be, will still always be there.  I don't say that becasue I'm attempting to give everything a quick coating of pessimism, it's just a fact.  It doesn't mean things don't move on or get better.  In this case, I went the whole "you played yourself" route.  My boys, or at least my oldest son, will be carrying some mental and emotional scars I helped give him.  That, in turn, has left me my own scars.  Not a day goes by without me thinking about that.  The same can be said of my mother, but I'll get to her.  I acknowledge that she was hurt and it was, in part, a result of me doing what I did, and was still doing in some cases.  How she has handled it, however, has blown a massive hole in the foundation of my relationship with her.  While I never wanted to hurt her, her response has exhaused the well from which I was drawing my regret and desire to make amends to move forward.  As it stands now, unless she is telling me something related to the boys, we don't talk.  Yesterday was likely the last time I will physically interact with her, or my sons, for a potentially long time and every response I gave her was a simplistic and close to one word as I could provide.  And please forgive the melodrama this next statement is leaking, but as far as I'm concerned, I've no reason to talk to her anymore beyond that and I will be holding what she has done to me until the last breath I take on this Earth.  Even if she does turn around at some time in the future, it's not going to matter to me.  I don't care what she says or does.  It's not going to change what she's doing now or the effects that will have with each passing day.  She has decided to take something from me and has refused, despite anything I have said or done.  When she presented her reasons, I provided a compromise that completely satisfied the conditions she has said are the cause of her decisions, and she still said "no."  So as far as I'm concerned right now, she's not doing this solely because of her beliefs about the welfare of my children.  I'm not saying she doesn't genuinely care for them and want to protect them.  I am saying that after everything has been said and done, she's doing this for the sole purpose of telling me "no" and possibly, though this is a personal thought you may want to take with a grain of salt, to retaliate for what she and the boys have gone through as a result of my sins.  Maybe she just wants me to suffer as a way of letting her feel I "learned" something.

 

Circling back to the actual beginning, if you can isolate that to any one time or event, about 5 years ago she and I took my boys and we moved away from my father.  We went one county over and started renting a house.  This was for a number of reasons.  The one least pertinent to all of the issues leading to my situation at present, was being closer to her father.  He's in his mid 80s and is the type of man who never asks overtly, or specifically, for help with anything.  Outside of that mentality being a part of his personality, he also served in the army and air force, though I don't recall how long exactly.  He did see combat in Vietnam and was some sort of contracted consultant in the Gulf War.  Before that, he was a coal miner and the oldest living member of his family.  After he retired he became a deacon of a southern baptist church and maintained that role until a few years ago.  He also became heavily involved in one of those projects helping people in dire straits get a home by having people build it for them.  He keeps his own garden now too.  And not like a window box thing.  Like 70% of his backyard.  The man knows how to do things and just does them.  My mother wanted to be closer to him as his was getting older and to be available to help him by asking if she could or randomly showing up on his doorstep.  Lots of yard mowing.  Some roof maintenance too.  He also adores my boys.  At the moment, they are his only great-grandchildren and his smile and visible joy to see them is palpable.

 

The reason we moved away from my father was to escape him.  What I mean by that is, the type of person he was, his personality, world view, mentality on anything was toxic.  Now, I am by no means a medical professional with the rights or professional expertise to diagnose him in any formal manner.  My personl observations and interactions led me to believe, with a healthy degree of certainty, he was narcissitic.  I don't know if there can be "degrees" of narcissism, but he was very much one of those people you encounter always making comments about having seen more, done more, experienced more, and understood anything better than we did.  Which fed into that aspect always approaching anything, with the idea he is using to addresss it, he is correct, you don't know what you're talking about, well I've done it like this before, and so on and so forth.  He also had a nasty habit doing things without asking, or even informing anyone it would affect.  Prime example: my mother made a comment, at some point, her computer was getting slow and she was running out of space on the harddrive.  That was it.  That's all she said.  She wasn't asking for anything from anyone.  She literally just made the comment in passing and life moved on.  Except it wasn't.  Some time shortly after she made that comment, he took her laptop, while she was out somewhere, and dove in bull in china shop style.  He wiped everything, deleted things he felt were redundant, pointless, or not specifically needed for the computer to function.  See where this is going?  I won't get into the fallout or how he acted when my mother confronted him about it.  It's not nessecarilly relevent.  So yeah...wasn't the first time he'd done that either.  Cliff notes version, inconsiderate may be more tactfull than required.  Bringing proof he was wrong was always a, "buckle up, this ride's about to get bumpy."  So, not a nice guy.  Enter new ingrediants.  Alcohol and drugs!  Legal drugs.  Doctor perscribed.  But he was absolutely abusing their use.  Not gonna get into the downward spiral.  That would honestly be a story unto itself.  My mother finally took a job despite his objections, opened a bank account without him on it, and started saving with me to be financiall capable of moving.  I hated doing it becasue I did love him.  I've been told I'm rather empathetic, which might explain that feeling.  I kept imagining him alone in that house with no friends and the perpetual reminder he lost his family.  I've cried imagining it.  And while I didn't know it, that was foreshadowing at it's finest.  We had finally gotten out though.

 

Now here is where the issue of her legal authority over the kids is explained.  Cliff note version again.  I'm not fond of rehashing this.  The reason I had moved in with them and took the boys was the result of a decently ugly divorce from my ex-wife.  She'd done mountain's worth of things between her leaving us (and yes.  She left us, not the other way around) and the actual divorce.  Pissed my mother off to no end.  She didn't want her to have anything to do with the boys because she didn't care about them when she decided to leave, and virtually any contact she had been given was to my oldest son, while pretty much ignoring my youngest (my youngest son is autistic and very much needs attenention.)erwards, my oldest was always visibly processing something because his behavior would change.  My ex was also rather vindictive and added to my mother's anger by actively attempting to say or do things in an attempt to circumvent the terms placed on her during any visitations.  One thing came up, which I knew would be an issue because I'm not ignorant or stupid, about "child support."  She wasn't a fan.  Her comment during this revelation was we shouldn't fight for childsupport becasue it's not like she wouldn't help her children.  It's like asking  an eagle why it flies.  That's just what it does.  So my parents devised an alternative capable of preventing her from ever having any legal power for the rest of her life, but she wouldn't be responsible for child care or any other financial duties she may be legally required to later on down the line.  There was legitimately diffent reasons as well though.  The boys would have health insurance under him as retired military,  and become recipiniants of his social security benefits.  There other perks, but those two were the biggest one.  The thing of it was, there was no way in heaven or earth if wasn't signing as well.  I don't profess to know her thoughts, but I'd been with her long enough to form my opinions on her thought process and reasons for doing something.  I believe she wouldn't agree without me doing so as well becasue she would see it as me getting/having more than her.  She just wanted to bring me down a peg for her own ego.  She's also a story by herself.  But since that was the only way, I agreed and my parents said they would grant me legal guardianship when all was said and done.  All of this is why she does have the legal authority to do what she's doing.  But wait, I hear you ask, don't I have legal guardianship?  Funny thing about that... Yes, I did right after the divorce.  I didn't mention it earlier, but my father passed away just a bit over a years ago.  A few things happened at that point.  The boys started collecting on those social security benefits to the tune of around $2,000 a month, or at least close enough to $2,000.  There were other things as well, they just aren't relevant to what I'm talking about.  Now my mother claimed she didn't know this until speaking with an attorney back in June or July, but since my father passed away, the legal guardianship became void since the original document granting it was signed by both of my parents and he could no longer legally agree to anything.  To get it back, my mother would have to sign a new one in her name only.  Two things about this.  First, she never bothered to tell me that.  I didn't find out till after she left with the boys in September and the only reason I found out was I needed to sign waivers to get into a trampoline park adventure deal.  I wanted to take him there, and their website offered me the option of signing and submitting it electronically while booking a time slot.  I don't technically have an address right now so I thought I would just use the one he's living in right now.  In all the stuff going down, I'd never asked her what it was because, frankly, I didn't want to know.  In trying to get it however, I was made aware of this when she initially sounded, and maybe I read into it too much, wary and almost suspicious.  She wanted to know why I was asking.  So I told her about the form I was filling out.  She immidiately came out, rather forcefully, that the document was asking for the information of the person legally responsible for them and that wasn't me.  When I mentioned the guardianship, she told me it was void and why.  My obvious question at that point was asking what was the issue resigning it.  She gave me the simplist answer she could, though would later on elaborate more about it.  She just told me she didn't want to.  I knew why, but we'll get back to that.  Now you know where the legal guardianship went.  So, and get very comfortable and familiar this, she told me I had no authority or power.  The number of times she would go on to point that out became "beating a dead horse with a sledge hammer."

 

Things were going fine at that point.  It was a little on the dificult side becasue I was workinng as a baker for Panera Bread, and the shifts were overnight.  8 to 5ish if I remember correctly.  My mother had found another job in the area and we settled into something that could be mistaken for equilibrium.  It just sucked that I had to be the one handling anything related to the boys during the day, which impacted my sleep.  But it was all doable.  We were making it.  Unfortunately that was when I started doing my part in why she left with the boys.  Alcohol.  Just like my father.  You'd be here all week reading if I walked you through the entire journey.  The simplest answer is, my decisions, actions, and personality started to dive bomb.  We're talking, "Perigrine Falcon" style here.  I was drinking and, after a few confrontations with mother, started trying to hide it.  I became less involved with the boys, wasn't participating  in activities like Mario Party (we used to play that oftten), or going out to parks or things of that nature, and wasn't going to school events of my oldest's.  I was told later, by my mother, he answered her question about inviting me to something by saying that was fine, but he didn't really think I'd go.  My use of language became vulgar and apparently louder.  I was quick to anger, and sometimes at the most inconsequential things you could image.  I had even started drinking on the job.  Things spiraled down that way right up to her leaving with the boys.  Eventually I ended up quitting the job I hate becasue I had developed a sever, and rather horrible to look at, case of psoriasis.  It was on something like 80% of me.  After my father's passing, I also found I had been left a sizable amount of money.  Did I need to quit?  Not necessarily.  There were some things going on where I worked that were rapidly turning it into a negative prospect with unrealistic expectations.  I personally felt it was so they could document enough dirt through everything they were doing, knowing we couldn't do all of it, thus have the power to fire us at any point with enough evidence to fight any potential actions about unfair termination and such.  I started looking at doing something for the psoriasis and went to see a dermatologist about it.  Good news?  Yes.  There were some very effective and promishing ways to fight it.  Bad news?  They were injections and after getting lab work done, my liver was too far out of whack to handle those injections.  The best I could do for the moment was a topical spray with a steroid in it.

 

Now here is one of those moments on honesty.  I really wasn't trying to fix anything.  Yeah I went to the doctors for scanning and getting some medications, but I wasn't like writing it all down or pushing for the next available appointment.  I also wasn't exactly curtailing the drinking either, which was something I was specifically told to avoid.  Towards the end of things, around September, I was basically staying in my room 90% of any given day either sleeping from alcohol consumption or watching YouTube.  My mother started pushing me to give her money to help with the rent and utilities.  From where I'm sitting now, I don't really think it was unreasonable.  My problem was she hounded me doggedly about applying for jobs, and my father's passing had left her with more money than can imagine ever having in my entire life, as well as the social security money from the boys.  My rationale, angry, selfish, and likely alochol induced as it was, had been the amount of money she was sitting on and receiving being so much that claims of needing help with bills didn't make sense.  My mother would constantly fight with me over the thermostat.  I don't get cold easily and I get hot and uncomfortable just walking 15 feet to the car.  She , however, got cold easily and quickly.  Instead of putting on a jacket or other layer of some sort, she would just crank the AC up to keep it from getting the house any cooler than 76F.  Between my already built in problem with heat, and the alcohol, I was prone to get uncomfortable as soon as the temperature went up.  I even tried to compromise with her and put it down to 73F instead of what I wanted.  Nope.  It had to be 76F or more for her to be comfortable without weaering extra layers.  She would tell me she shouldn't have to bundle up in her own home and  my father had kept it like that for over 30 years.

 

After she received the money from my father's passing, my mother started house hunting.  She didn't want to rent anymore becasue we kept running into problems with landlords and she wanted the freedom to furnish and decorate without a landlord's permission.  Given how things turned out, I have also realized she was probably looking for a house with leaving me behind already a factor.  Regardless, she found one and closed on it.  I woke up one day, stepped out of my room, and saw movers packing everything up in a truck to take to her new house.  She was sitting in the living room with my brother and  his fiance.  I assume they were just waiting on me.  Short and sweet?  I'm leaving with the boys.  You're not coming.  I honestly had nothing to say to anyone at that point.  My brother just looked at me like, "You made your bed here."  He won't come out and say it, but he absolutely supported her decision here.  I don't know if he influenced her to make it, but he was behind it.

 

Here is where I have to hit the breaks for a moment.  I have issues with my mother and I always have.  After she left my father she commented once on this being the first time in her life she wasn't planning around somebody else.  She married my father right out of high school and maybe three or four months before turning 18.  She commented about having to always do what her mother told her, which was partly why she married.  Except she was then operating with my father's rules.  He wasn't as bad about some things back then, but there were still issues.  My mother has said she believes part of the reason she stayed with him for so long was not having the chance to get out as her own person and moved from obeying one person to obeying another.  So here she was now, finally free of that.  Now I don't begrudge her the feelings she held on that.  When she commented on frustration over having to help raise the boys, it was never because of the boys are anything they did.  She was just frustrated that she bounced from her mother to my father and now had to effectively be a mother again after having already raised 3 children and was now in her 50s.  Again, that's fair.  I can understand and support that.  It was even more difficult with my youngest son being autistic.  Not for any mean or ugly reason, he just requires more supervision and engagement.  For context, he was 6 in September, but I would ball part his development somewhere around 3 or 4.  He isn't entirely potty trained and his vocabulary and ability to speak is extremely limited.  He can express certain things verbally, it seems, to me, that not so much him having an idea and expressing it as much as it is memorizing the words we've taught to use in a certain way and when he uses them that way he gets something he wants.  He is prone to fits too.  Sometimes they are extremely loud and potentially go on for a while.  Coming back to my mother though, she expressed frustration over needing to be a parent  and coping with my youngest's developmental issues on top of that.  Her most recent comment about that, which was made during the back and forths I'll get to in a moment, was she felt she was the one getting dunked on because of decisions I, and my ex wife, made.  Again.  Fair.  No argument.  Correct.  As I spiraled out, she was getting hung out to dry and doing things largely herself and was getting very little support from me, which she knew was tied to the alcoholism.  

 

After she left, I had until the end of December to figure out what I was going to do.  She told me she was done helping me with anything and after the 31st of Dec, she would no longer have any legal connections or obligations to me.  At first I was just numbly dumbfounded trying to process it.  Eventually it evolved into anger over losing the boys and ultimately despair and depression.  I didn't participate with my family for Thanksgiving or Christmas.  I didn't want to be around her and my brother, or in her new house, becasue it was only going to remind me of what I lost.  That foreshadowing I mentioned after thinking of my dad?  Yeah this is it.  I was effectively in the same position now.  I was alone in an empty house.  Granted I did have friends and people to support me, so I wasn't as isolated as he was.  So here's the thing.  I was not angry with her moving out and taking them like that.  If I realistically look at how everything was going and how my choices were affecting everyone, it genuinely was about the only thing left for to do.  She had been talking to me about what I was doing and how my oldest was feeling based on things he would tell her or say around her.  She'd been fighting with everything I was doing and getting nowhere.  I wasn't changing or pursuing anything I said I would.  I was just laying around literally doing about nothing.  Alcohol and YouTube.  When she left like that it was violent wake up call.  I took everything she said and applied it to myself.  I coudln't argue it.  Not because something would stop me or that I didn't have any power, becasue she was right and entirely justified in almost every single reason she had for doing what she did.  My oldest had developed issues relating to self esteem, watching me spiral down, and watching me slowly slip away from him.  We used to be together all the time.  My ex left me twice.  First when my oldest was four months old.  I was stupid and remarried her a few years later, which led to the second time she walked out, but that's not the story here.  So I did the single parent thing for awhile and my mother would watch him when I was at work.  Even after I moved with both of them back with my parents, I was involved with him.  There are so many things we used to do together and things he looked forward to and missed.  My mother told me how many times he would comment on missing me being that way.  At the end of the day, her leaving with them was something I did not find unfair or spiteful.  It just the last option she had to protect them from my actions.  She pointed out to me that in all of his life thus far, she's been the only stable thing in it.  His mother left, his mother came back, she left again, we moved back to my parents, saw some of what my father was doing, moved away, started watching me pull away,  lose faith in me, and effectively leave him too.  Yes I was physically present.  But he didn't feel he could really talk to me or interact with me.  So yeah, I sat down and accepted all of that.  After Christmas I started trying to see them again.  That's when everything started moving where I now.

 

As far as the living situation went, I had been with my partners for almost 2 years at that point.  I had even gone up to visit one of them in August.  This is where the transgender aspect of everything  will start to factor in.  When everything blew up and I was figuring out my options, the partner I had just visited felt moving up where they were was the best option at the moment.  I could, theoretically go it alone somewhere down here.  But without a roommate I would pretty much blow everything left of what my father left me even if I had a full time job.  The cost of living is simply too high.  My mother told me plainly to my face I was never going to live under her roof.  My partner lives in an apartment with some kind of federal support, I forget exactly what, essentially basing rent prices on income and any health issues or disabilities.  The prospect of moving from the studio apartment they are currently in to a one bedroom in the same building was feasible.  They spoke to people in the office about it and we started doing all the paper work.  Long story short, it's looking generally positive.  There is an interview of some sort I need to undergo, but that's apparently a good sign becasue that means they haven't just decided to reject me.  Though I don't know they were thinking when they scheduled the first one becasue it was set for sometime in the begining of January, they're in Massaschusetts, and I'm in Florida.  A fact they had to know becasue the application paperwork for me need all addresses I had lived in for the past 5 years.  After dancing around with how the move will work, the plan was for them to fly down to me in the first week of February, we'd rent a trailer, and trek back north with my stuff.  I don't have much.  After my mother left she had decided, in her infinite wisdom, to stack totes and boxes with my name on them on a shelf deal made of plastic.  Two problems.  I would later discover that there was a substantial amount of items scattered throughout all of those containers and in no way belonging to me.  The second problem, and the one most frustrating for me, were the containers.  Remember that plastic shelf thing I just mentioned?  My sister apparently told my mother it didn't look stable and was probably overloaded with too much weight.  My mother's effective response was, "It'll be fine."  Show of hands! Anyone want to speculate the outcome of this decision?  Yeah...  I went into the garage at some point after they had all left and found the shelf had indeed collapsed and a number of the containers were damaged, some beyond salvaging.  Items stored in them were also damaged or destroyed.  

 

So yay...this looks lovely.  Upon mentioning this gravity driven event and the subsequent damage caused by it, I was basically told sorry that happened.  That must be annoying.  Well just have it all picked up and cleaned by the time the lease is up.  This is when things started to cross into territory beyond my agreeing with my mother over things.  You tell me to be an adult, find our own place, figure your own affairs out, but the mess I caused to your possessions and containers needed to move them while I was dashing out the door is something you need to take care of.  I was later "generously" offered empty totes and boxes from her.  Knowing I had to get it cleaned up and also needing to condense what I would be keeping with me in light of significantly reduced space in which to store it, I ended up going through every single item in every box.  I parted ways with an astronomical numbert of things.  I can see why I was keeping them.  Things rich in nostalgia and memories of a time long ago accompanied by pictures and cheap, plastic awards for school or church events were among the massive pile on the floor.  I ended up getting rid of it becasue as wonderful as those memories were, pragmatically I could not keep them.  My mother wouldn't store them in her house, especially with me moving up to Massachusetts.  There wouldn't be room for it once I got up there and it would make transporting it more difficult and expensive.  So it had to go.  The important thing is, I ended up physically touching every  item there as I cleaned, consolodated, donated, disposed of, and repacked.  This will be important in a moment.  Since I couldn't stay in the house after the lease was up on 31st and I wouldn't be leaving till the beginning of February, I got rid of everything I could through donation or tossing it out and took what I would be keeping to sit in a storage unit.  Once that was taken care of, I booked a room in an extended stay hotel to cover the days between leaving the house and starting to drive north.  It was the cheapest option.

 

Ok.  Gonna hit the brakes again.  I told you the transgender thing would come up, so here's how that fits into all of this.  I've posted a number of things relating to being transgender in various places on the forum, so some of this doesn't need repetition.  Where it gets important is when I got involved with my partners.  When I met and became involved with them it was opening some new doors for me.  The partner I'm moving in with is non-binary and trans.  My other partner is more gender nonconforming, but uses he/him pronouns and doesn't have any problems with the term "boyfriend."  We rarely call him that, but he is fine when we do.  The part of me that had been sitting neglected in the back of my mind and locked behind all the bars and doors of ingrained religious and social beliefs I'd been raised in had always been there.  I mentioned it at some point when I was posting about when I knew or something along that line.  The first demonstrable piece of evidence was something I wrote in a journal when I was eleven.  I may have thought about it before that, but I don't remember if I did with it being so long ago.  Well becoming involved with them also brought me into the monkey sphere (Actual term.  Look it up!) of their friends.  My non binary partner is extremely close to a friend they grew up with who is also trans.  FtM.  That friend has been on HRT for a while now and is trying to get top surgery done and is having an outright war with parental figures over smoking.  Short version is they were made aware of the reason this person can't be around the smoke and are sort of being [insert appropriate preferred insulting term here] about it.  And that friend is in a quite solid and supportive relationship with another FtM transgender partner.  So I went from having almost no exposure to people or environments facilitating, acknowledging, and supporting the pursuit of identity and self to all of that.  I was raised as a southern baptist.  For anyone not familiar with what entails exactly, strap in for a lot of singing, with generally slow songs you will never learn the words to becasue they only come up  like twice a year, a generous helping of judgemental condemnation, a little praying to clense the pallet, a friendly reminder that Jesus wants your money and if you don't leave it with the church he will not be happy and the flat tire you get the following Thursday wasn't worth the $10 you didn't give the church that day, and what you should be reading in your bible this week to achieve your required guilt level goals.

 

----Disclaimer Note: I am not seeking to insult anyone or the religious beleifs they may have.  My descriptions here are an extension of my feelings and the sense of sarcastic descriptions I find personally amusing.  This in no way supports any particular point of view about the beleifs, the people who hold them, the activities hosted by them, or ideas they hold.  This is solely the way I feel about it and my experiences leading to my feelings about it are largely from one specific church I was taken to for a number of years whether I wanted to go or not.

 

  There are also an inordinant number of social gatherings, usually involving being outside and fueled by donations of things cooked by attendees.  If you ever take a leaf from Jane Goodall's methods of study, you're gonna want to get used to red beans and rice.  I get that it's not unanimously like this across the board and I believe there are truly wonderful and loving churches embracing everyone with none of the negativity.  I have yet to encounter that in this area, but I believe they exist.  Clearly the church I was being taken to was not one of those.  Taken with the years being taken to church before moving to Florida, the relevance to my transgender identity lies in one of the bedrocks of this church's core beliefs.  Again, I know there are churches out there who do not share these views.  Unfortunately, the churches in this area are all pretty much in lock step.  If there's an odd one out, I haven't seen it.  So they, they being the church and congregation, were quite vociferous in thrusting those beliefs on anyone and everyone.  Have always been tied to a church in some fashion, I'd spent years metaphorically locked away in a cage.  My grandfather was religious, my mother was religious, and every Sunday I'd spend about two and a half hours being told exactly what to think, feel, believe, live by, and do, or not do as the case may be.  That was the cage so to speak.  Defined, spelled out, hard boundaries operating as a template of the life I was "supposed to" live.  I've commented a bit more at length about this in several other posts in the event anyone wants to go read that.  In the end, it boiled down to knowing I had those feelings and desires, but knowing nothing except the walls of that cage, I was operating under the belief that what I wanted was just never gonna happen and I should trudge through my existance accepting that desire and disappointment as readily as accepting a hand or foot.  It was just a part of me and I needed to live with it.  Now I'm sure this will just shock you, but the members of my family and the church body I was enduring, held some rather hard line beliefs.  Like my grandfather, there was a rigid, black and white approach to pretty much anything.  Now what do you suspect their beliefs on any LFBTQ topics are?   First caller to give the correct answer gets to keep reading!  Obviously that was a "negative ghost rider."  I would like to make a distinction here.  I don't know if any of those church goers ever considered the distinction in my thought about it.  Ostensibly anything tied to that topic was basically, "Well you do have free choice granted by God, but reading over the instructions he left us (meaning the Bible) it seems you have made the wrong choice to live in sin and go to hell for eternity.  Your accomodations have already been arranged."  Eh.  At least they booked my room for me?  But if you stopped to think about it, their primary argument against it all, was God's plan and all the rules they cherry pick to support that argument.  However, I wanted to point out that, "No.  What you're doing is telling people what all of you want, not God."  Last time I checked, God apparently had his son killed to grant everyone eternal forgiveness and that instruction manual has a number of verses telling people to do all that fun stuff.  You know, forgive, accept, turn the other cheek, don't judge anyone, and to show their love to the world.  Now, I suppose the Bible might have been edited since I was going to that church, but basically they weren't telling us God's plan, but their interpretation of it.  Which they backed up with something in the ballpark of "I'm a christian and my walk with God means I do know what God wants."  I can only assume the revision thought again, becasue they sure wearn't going with any of that positive stuff about love and acceptance without judgement.

Swinging back to what that had to do with my mother, her position on LGBTQ issues fell neatly in line with her father’s, and her religion supported that.  I had many conversations with her over the years, so inevitability the issue would come up.  Not necessarily in a personal context so much as a subject of national discourse.  With her though, she was far more subtle in how she approaches issues she holds personal beliefs on.  Essentially she avoids actively denouncing the people of the LGBTQ community and their beliefs.  If she dodges direct confrontation, she can truthfully claim she wasn’t disparaging anyone or anything, while simultaneously offering noncommittal responses without condoning something she did not support.  After visiting my partner, I was opening up and embracing my identity.  I returned with pierced ears, nail polish, capris, and blouses.  She saw the writing on the wall, but opted to ignore it initially.  I don’t remember the specifics of the situation leading to my coming out.  I just remember it was not the way I wanted.  I put it all on the table.  Outright told her I was trans and in a relationship with two partners.  Fun times.  The only response I got was my mother telling me no matter what I looked like, believed, felt, acted like, or said, I would “always be her son.”  I mean, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.  I knew her positions and beliefs.  The entire “coming out” process was going to be an ugly affair no matter how you sliced it.  The first time she saw me in a skirt, I was about to leave for Walmart to get some groceries.  She gave me this whole head to toe scan, visible movement as she looked me over.  That lasted a few seconds before she just asked, “you’re going out like that?”    My partners believe my coming out may not have led to her leaving with the boys by itself, but it was a catalyst for the move happening when it did.  I don’t know that I agree on that point, but I can see why my partners would think that.  She was moving out maybe a week later.  Later on, in one of her communications with me, she brought up my not addressing the transgender issue with my oldest son.  The thing of it is, she worded it in a way insinuating I had “dropped the ball” and she would have to discuss it with him.  When she said that, I told her I hadn’t brought it up because he was dealing with enough already.  She fired back by telling me coming back from my trip the way I had was already placing the issue on him.

Now here’s where things dove off a cliff with feet in a cement block.  My mother felt I had screwed everything up so badly, she didn’t want me around the boys unless she was present.  Let me make a quick distinction here.  This decision she was making didn’t actually bother me.  I mean, yeah I didn’t like it, but as I said earlier, I agreed with her and her rationale for doing things this way.  It amounted to supervised visitation.  My frustration was entirely directed at myself for this.  It hurt knowing what I had become was so toxic and the roll I played in it was responsible, in part.  Had it stopped there, things would have been fine insofar as it could be.  I used to work as a Behavioral Health Technician and had, subsequently, overseen supervised visits for clients with custody and potential domestic issues.  I wasn’t a stranger to the process.  Then the other shoe dropped.  

I had wanted to take my oldest to a trampoline park in the area, as I mentioned earlier.  Cliff notes version: I wanted to go with him alone.  My mother proposed an alternative with her being there with us.  I pitched another idea with just me and my son.  She suggested another one with her there.  See where this is going?  I knew what she was doing, I just wanted her to come out and actually say it.  Which she ultimately did.  She told me I could not be alone with either of the boys if she wasn’t present.  Again, not thrilled, and annoyed she wouldn’t admit what she was doing until I backed her into a corner.  It only got worse from there.  This now brings us to the point I was venting in my posts here on the forums.  My mother knew I was leaving for Massachusetts in the first week of February and limited the time I had with them.  I was getting frustrated at this point and didn’t really want to talk to her.  I felt she was getting personal in keeping me away from the boys.  She was already jumping on me for every little thing she could find.  She even accused me of stealing things from her.  It came down to her simply assuming the worst thing I could do was what I was doing.  I sent my son a message with a question about the time frame for an event we had planned.  She lost her mind over that and changed his phone number without telling me or my son.  When I was finally able to see them at my mother’s house, another fight blew up.  She was accusing me of manipulating her with my son and making him some sort of “go between.”  I had to pull out my phone and literally shove it in her face to prove I had been trying to get ahold of either my son or her for the past 6 hours.  She hadn’t even checked her phone.  And when she said she couldn’t see any missed calls I showed her my phone’s log proving I had called multiple times.  Finally it all just fell apart.  Granted there was more to it, my mother basically told me I had no rights to know anything about either of the boys and I blew my chance when I had it.  This, among a few other main points, became her mantra.  She would repeat them over and over and over.  At one point I took several paragraphs to tell her to stop bringing those things up because I flat out agreed with her and I was acutely aware of those facts.  She still did and told me to get over it.  I just told her she was putting that in there for her own sake at that point.  I literally had an entire page dedicated to addressing each of those issues by acknowledging them, agreeing with them, steps taken to accommodate and facilitate her demands.  I ended up just telling her she wasn’t listening and she’s only saying those things for herself because I had 2 entire letters saying nothing but, yes, she was right, I know what I did, and I accepted it would be a slow road back.  Nope.  That’s when it got petty and vindictive.  She decided I didn’t need to know anything about her, or them, at all.  She sent me a message about something coming up the next Saturday.  When I asked who would have the boys she outright refused to tell me and said it was none of my business.  I also found out the thing that “came up” was her going to spend the day with a friend.  She literally wanted to conceal that and where the boys were so I didn’t try to see them without her there.  I was done at that point.  She kept arguing she was doing what she felt was best for the boys.  But here’s the problem: ostensibly, the reason she didn’t want me communicating with my oldest was to prevent more emotional stress for him.  But when I told her to at least let me know what was going on in his life and where he was spending his time she simply refused.  If she legitimately was concerned about the emotional stress and nothing more, she had absolutely no reason to conceal information from me.  I asked her to just keep me in the loop.  She was getting started with a therapist for him and I was trying to do what I could to start rebuilding things with them.   She didn’t need to even tell him she was doing it.  This was personal.  She didn’t want me to know because she wanted to starkly slap me with the power she has in the situation.  She was in control and she wanted to make damn sure I knew it.  I even figured out she has blocked me on Facebook.  Granted I haven’t posted anything to it in years.  I just used the messenger feature occasionally.  But she blocked me to prevent me learning even the smallest hint of anything going on with her and them.  She also became the gatekeeper to any communication with him.  She blocked my number on my son’s phone so I couldn’t text him directly.  She blocked my email address and Steam accounts on his computer.  I literally can’t say anything to him unless my mother sees it first.  She has simply removed me from their lives.  She even told me at one point she wished I would just move away and get out of their lives.  

With my options limited, the only thing I can really do now is write to him.  I have decided to do this in a specific way though.  I will write a standard letter for my mother to see.  I hold no illusions anymore and absolutely know she will edit or omit anything she doesn’t want him seeing.  However, I intend to send a second file with a copy of the first letter as I wrote it, and a letter more serious and personal about things going on.  That second file will be encrypted and my son will get the password to open it when he turns 18.   What he does with it after that is up to him.  I just want him to have the freedom to choose that himself when my mother can’t legally control him anymore.  He can also compare the letters my mother let through to the original in the encrypted files.

 

Disclaimer 2.0: What you read after this is 100% my feelings about everything.  I don’t know if it will potentially trigger anyone, but before reading any further, it is important to know I am not going to be calm, or entirely rational.  I am going to be extremely blunt in expressing these things.  If you feel that may be more than you can handle, please skip it.  I am not seeking a vulgar, curse word laden explosion, but it will be raw.  

——The Point of no Return——

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recognize the proclivity of hyperbolic descriptions in times of intense, emotional duress.  That said, my mother is dead to me.  There is no going back.  There is no making it up.  There is no scenario, or chain of events that will undo what she’s done.  She has actively let her personal anger and resentment boil over into her actions.  She has no reason for making sure I have no idea what is happening to my children beyond having the power to keep it from me.  It sure as hell isn’t for their benefit, emotional or otherwise.  She is actively shutting me out because she has the power to.  Simply letting me know what is being discussed with the therapist, things he says, upcoming events in their lives, and all things in that ballpark in no way affects them.  She is shutting me out to punish me.  I accept the parts I am legitimately responsible for, but she is punishing me for her own anger and resentment.  She took all the negativity and pent up rage against my father and just placed it on me.  She says she is over him but that amounts to an industrial pile of bovine refuse.  She is burying me in her feelings.  This isn’t about “if I deserve it,” because at no point since she left have I argued with her over anything she has said or stated.  I even openly made a point of agreeing with her and citing examples of my behaviors warranting her actions and feelings about me.  This is extremely simple.  She wants to punish me because I hurt her and now she is hurting me back knowing I can’t do a single thing about it.

So all those feelings showing up in my comments stemmed from all of that.  I am hurt so deeply I lack the power to convey it.  I have found myself shaking with tears everywhere I turn.  I have cried so hard I can’t see and wanted to scream till my throat can no longer sustain any sound.  I am constantly bombarded with memories of my boys and the time with them.  I still hear them.  I remember things with them.  Faces, words, events… I am starting to lose myself even as I am typing this.  It hurts so much I don’t know how to carry on.  My mother made a comment about how I was running away with “friends” instead of working on things there, but balked when I said she put me in this position.  She said I made the choices leading to this.  No.  I made the decisions that left you angry and you took actions forcing my hand.  She absolutely knew I had no options.  She was trying to box me in and force me to do things the way she wanted me to.  My partners both believe she is a toxic narcissist and her reactions have just fallen exactly in line with the actions of narcissists.  She wanted me to go back to work, drop the trans business, and march to her tune.  Every time I refused in the past was fuel for the fire blazing now.  She is going to do her damndest to force me into doing things her way.  She even used my coming out against me by claiming I was clearly trying to find myself right now and the boys didn’t need that in their lives.

So bluntly?  I hate her and will carry my resentment for her for every remaining moment I have on this Earth.  When she passes away I will acknowledge she existed and raised me.  She has done good things in my life.  I loved her.  I owe many aspects of myself to her.  But I won’t ever forget, or forgive, this.  If I say anything at her funeral it will literally be me walking up in front of the attendees and saying she was my mother.  That’s it.  And I hope she finally figures out, before she passes, that I will carry these feelings past her death.  For every moment going forward she will be irrevocably crystalized in my mind, and heart, as the vindictive monster taking pleasure in striking at my wounds and stealing pieces of my heart.  The animal seeking to cause pain solely for the pleasure of watching it tear me apart.  I may never have my boys in the same way ever again.  I have no knowledge, or control, in what’s being said and shown to them.  I will not have those precious moments of their achievements and their joy.  Had this simply been about doing the best thing for them and having any genuine interest in my repairing my relationship with them, I would have understood.  I did everything physically possible to capitulate and facilitate her on those grounds.  I never fought her on the merits of her logic until it became so personally targeted.  I am angry.  I am filled with barely contained rage.  I find myself thinking of what it will be like for her in the moment she actually understands the scope and literalness of my feelings about her.  I have thought of what she’ll think on every birthday, mother’s day, and holiday in the coming years when she gets nothing from me.  She said she didn’t want to talk to me unless it’s about the boys.  That’s all I will do.  She tried to send me a message a few days ago about suspecting I was bipolar.  Not about the boys so not responding to it.  I will send my letters and document everything.  It’s the only thing left for me to do.  I can only hope my son will understand all of this some day.  I do not like to be a creature of such darkness and seething malevolence towards anything or anyone.  But that’s how I feel.  As time marches on, I am sure that will change, or be less intense, but I hate her.  If she hit by a bus today I would think it tragic in the same way I feel when a celebrity I love passes away.  I acknowledge it, bear some small sadness, but move on.  She doesn’t warrant the emotional attention or energy.  I hope she hurts and is miserable.  Because I absolutely know how petty and vindictive that is, but I feel it all the same.  Every moment lived without my boys because of this vengeance fueled course of action, is weight added to the ill will I wish upon her.  She spent decades hammering all that mercy and forgiveness crap from the church, but where is any of that now?  I was fine with her leaving.  It was the slap in the face I desperately needed.  I deserved it and I am glad I got it.  Everything after that was a massive heap of rotting garbage burying her gaslit claims of eternal love and forgiveness.  She absolutely had the right to react in defense of the boys.  I will never deny or disagree with that.  I am not blameless by any stretch.  But she will be buried with my enmity.  I am truly sorry if that is cruel or makes me a monster in my own right.  It was never something I wanted to be.  I can only be hurt so much though.  I have nothing left to lose now.  She ran me out of a home, took away my family, ostracized me, and put her boot firmly on my neck.  There is literally nothing left for her to take from me now.  So I don’t give a **** what she says, does, or feels anymore.  I won’t actively engage her in any way detrimental to the boys’ well-being, but that’s for their sake.  Not hers.  She has left me so deeply scarred it has fundamentally changed who I am.  It’s redefined my life and the roads available for me to take as I love forward.  Maybe my sons will understand one day.  Maybe they will see her through some small aspect of the lense through which I see her.  Not exactly as I do, but at least aware of the reality behind how all of this happened.  Maybe they won’t.  Either way, I hate her and I wish her success only insofar as it serves the boys.  She can rot in cold, bitter isolation somewhere dark and forgotten for all I care.  It didn’t have to be this way.  She drove it this far.  She pushed everything towards this.  I will love and feel the empty hole in my heart the boys were torn from every moment of every day.  And so too will I feel the anger and vehemence strangling my memories of her and watering them with despair and rage.  I used the term anathema once.  That’s how I see her.  A poison spreading to every aspect of life she touches.

So that’s where I am.  I apologize if any of that was upsetting or against any rules.  I was trying to keep it in line.  I also recognize that my views are isolated to me and my perspective.  I am ready to admit some level of irrationality stemming from my feelings about it all.  When I posted about finding the DDR machine yesterday it was specifically because I was hurting, crying, and I wanted something physically demanding to exhaust myself.  If I have crossed any lines in anything I have said, I am truly sorry to any mods that have to address it and will gladly take any actions needed on my part to correct it.  I am simply trying to expel what I feel in as pure a form as I can.  Sorry.

 

 

[Kelly2509]

whew!  That's a hell of a story!  Sorry things worked out that way.  Wish I had anything useful to say but I just don't have the life experience to add anything of value.  I hope things work better now that you can make a fresh start!

[Jackie C.]

All I can say is that I'm sorry your mother put you through that. My female genetic donor is much the same way. Fortunately, I was in a better place when she decided to cut ties. Having those ties cut may have been the best thing that ever happened to me though.

 

That's a lot. It will take a long time and a lot of work to recover from that. I wish you nothing but success in that endeavor and, while I absolutely applaud your decision to never forgive her, hate has no place in your heart. Treat her like you would any other dangerous animal and live your life. Maybe some day your boys will be able to come back to you and you can be a proper family again. I hope so anyway.

 

Hugs!

[DeeDee]

Most of this post was written in white text I had to highlight it to read, wasn't sure if it's just my PC or deliberately done?

@Lenneth I am glad you have found some supportive partners because you definitely have not experienced loving support in your own home life and absolutely deserve some loving acceptance in your life.

From what you have shared you are being and have been controlled and manipulated for years, and from my outside perspective as a random on the internet using someone's children as emotional weapons against them is just wrong, no matter what the excuse is.

As Jackie has already said, hopefully your relationship with your children will be restored, though it may take being in a place where you can prove that legally.

You have shared so much, and are very eloquent (and loquacious) when you write, you have so much to say and only a certain amount of it can be written down, but dont apologise for writing the way you do, it does not take away from the rawness of your pain and I am so sorry that you are having to live through this. 

[Lenneth]

9 minutes ago, DeeDee said:

Most of this post was written in white text I had to highlight it to read, wasn't sure if it's just my PC or deliberately done?

@Lenneth I am glad you have found some supportive partners because you definitely have not experienced loving support in your own home life and absolutely deserve some loving acceptance in your life.

From what you have shared you are being and have been controlled and manipulated for years, and from my outside perspective as a random on the internet using someone's children as emotional weapons against them is just wrong, no matter what the excuse is.

As Jackie has already said, hopefully your relationship with your children will be restored, though it may take being in a place where you can prove that legally.

You have shared so much, and are very eloquent (and loquacious) when you write, you have so much to say and only a certain amount of it can be written down, but dont apologise for writing the way you do, it does not take away from the rawness of your pain and I am so sorry that you are having to live through this. 

It’s not your computer.  I composed it in another program and copied it to here.  My background uses the dark theme in Chrome and didn’t show up that way to me when I posted it.  I didn’t see how it was posted until after I submitted it.  Thank you for your words of support.  The people here have been a wonderful source of support as all of this has developed.

[Jani]

I saw and corrected it.

 

[Lenneth]

Well, updates:

 

So I have had some time to step back and breathe.  To be clear, I still feel all the things I stated in my earlier post.  But I am trying to temper my responses and my partners have been personal rocks helping me stay anchored.  If that analogy is factually incorrect I apologize.  I am very much not a sailor.

 

At any rate, my son had asked me directly, before I left, if I would come back to see him. I told him absolutely, and when he got out of school I’d love nothing more.  Now for some background information.  Due to aforementioned communication barriers, I had to pass through my genetically contributing incubator.  My partner receives occasional, free codes for items in the game Roblox.  Neither of us plays it, but they know my son loves it.  They have given him codes in the past.  They had another and I had to send it to the incubator to pass on to him.  I know that sounds, and physically is, a simple thing to do.  But it triggers a lot of anger and hurt for me.  Now an immediate response was not what I was after.  We don’t generally talk.  I sent the code, told her what it was for, and who it was from, at something like 12:15am.  Even being an hour behind me, that’s after 11pm on a school night.  I did, at least, want some acknowledgment.  However, by noon the next day I still had nothing.  One o’clock rolls around and I tactfully ask if he received it.  I get an answer about she forgot, thanks for reminding her, they had forgotten because of homework and paperwork.  See the major problem here?

 

Time Line ———

Friday, Feb 25th 12:15am (11:15pm for Incubator and my son) - Text with code.

 

Friday, February 25th 1:23pm (12:23pm for incubator and my son) - Request about my son getting the code sent.  Response is immediate and asserts it had been forgotten amidst homework and paperwork. 

Three problems.  One far more glaringly obvious than the other two.  My son was in school.  It was Friday.  The schools weren’t out.  At 12:23pm he’s at school, not home with her.  He couldn’t be doing homework requiring her help with to instigate her forgetting anything at that time.  He’d been in school for 5 hours at that point.

 

The other problems were more subtle and more specifically aimed at me in a more personal way.  The first of those was mentioning “other paperwork.”  She made a massive production of crushing me with her god-like authority and explicitly letting me know I wouldn’t be allowed to know anything about them, their lives, or things going on where they lived unless she decided to tell me.  She made it crystal clear I couldn’t ask, and making any attempt at seeking information was going to trigger “lock down mode” resulting in the distinct likelihood I wouldn’t see, or communicate with, my son again until he was shaving.  So why even mention random “paperwork?”  My thoughts?  That was intentional.  It was dropped on purpose to generate curiosity about what “paperwork” she meant, and mentioning it on the heels of contacting her with a code from my partner for an online game would dial up the curiosity, while tapping into a certain amount of inherent fear I have about losing what crumbs of contact I have with my children.  This was done in the full knowledge that I can’t ask, per the incubator’s rules.  So that seemed, to me, literally constructed to cause me stress and frustration.

 

The second issue with the mention of paperwork is the nature of it.  Yeah she may have wanted me to just stress over it, but what paperwork would be so important, or relevant, she would even think about mentioning it.  Even if it was solely to screw with me, what about it even planted that idea?  I grant it may be nothing.  But before I left, and when she was coming down hard, vaguely mentioning things like that was becoming a thing and did usually mean more than she was saying.  Prime example?  She wanted to know when I wanted to see my son for the last time before I left.  It couldn’t be the weekend because, “something came up.”  I asked where the kids would be if she wasn’t going to be around.”  She was on her, “you can’t even be in a room with either of them if I’m not there” kick.  She flat out said I had no right to know and she wasn’t telling me.  Turned out she was going to visit a friend out of town and didn’t want me to know where the boys were because

 

A) She didn’t want me to have the ability to try and visit them without her there.

 

She wanted to specifically shove in my face that she could deny me and verbally said I had no right to know and I wouldn’t find out.

To steer this back to what I started discussing, I took all of that and just accepted it, with a lot of support from my partner.  I was angry but calmed down.  Fast forward.  That whole thing about my son wanting me to visit came up.  I know the incubator.  She comes up with reasons to say she didn’t know, or forgot, things relevant to my seeing, or communicating, with my boys.  So my partner and I drafted a very neutral, cordial message essentially telling her to be aware this had already been discussed, and with the end of school months away, I was giving her plenty of time to account for it.  Translation: prevent her from planning things specifically to claim visiting just wouldn’t work because they already had plans.  She tries to gaslight of course, saying she will get back with me when he is out about available times in June or July.  So we respond with a comment on potentially contacting her sooner because air fare and the cost for hotels and a rental vehicle can absolutely be booking time dependent when considering cost.  We’d do public transportation, but it’s the Florida panhandle near an air force base and more “Southern Alabama” than Florida.  Providing accessible, public services causes them physical pain.  
 

The resulting suggestion from the incubator is surprisingly good.  It works out well, is at a time I would have preferred to be there, and nothing has gotten ugly.  I tell her that works well, I am completely aware of all her rules and stipulations on seeing the boys and locations they can be seen in, and we’ll get back to her as the date gets closer.  Still hope she spends the last years of her life cold, alone, and crushed by the karma of her narcissistic cruelty, but taking this as a positive.  A civil, albeit terse, exchange with an amicable outcome.  I could handle that.

 

oh ho ho.  No no no.  That was too simple.  To mature.  The incubator didn’t exert her power and dominance by reminding me I was an ant subject to her whims!  I get a super long text about how I couldn’t pull the crap I was pulling before I left.  The essential point was, I have 0 interest in talking to her and actively avoid it.  She claims my son is suffering emotional distress about it and I am being combative by being curt and avoiding conversations.  She wants me to talk to her like absolutely nothing is f***** up.  Forgive the language please.  Basically cow tow to her because she won, has all the power, and I need to act like she’s right and everything is fine now.  She threatens (and she threatens this often) to end everything and revoke my ability to see my boys if I can’t accept talking to her like that because it is a necessary part of that relationship.  If I am going to be ugly I don’t even need to plan a trip until we “work our issues out.”  
 

In my initial post I mentioned how frustrated I was getting with her incessant need to repeat everything related to what I had done, how I screwed up, and how she had absolute power.  Well this wouldn’t be complete without that.  Remember when I said I specifically mentioned I was aware all her rules would stand and I knew that, respected it, and would follow it?  I said that knowingshe would do this and I wanted visual proof.  True to form this nastygram absolutely included her on the warpath about how her rules still stand and I would meet at her discretion, in places of her choosing.  All the things I literally had just told her I knew and would adhere to.  My only response was a screenshot of my having already said that and a simple “Understood.”  Her nastygram also demanded I “respect” her.  This frustrated my partner because it’s a set up.  It already establishes a dynamic wherein I need to respect the incubator while nothing was ever said about the incubator respecting me. They helped me word a response that was, again, neutral, but stated there was no reason there couldn’t be mutual respect.  My partner just wanted to get her response so we could document it.  They said that way if this ever came up it’s evident the discussion was about respect on both sides so if she does pull anything, I can just add that to the pile of things to let my boys see when she can’t legally control them.

 

So why write another novel?  I’m just…  It’s more than just being frustrated.  All those feelings from my last post are still there.  Yes time does affect them.  The situation isn’t as fresh and raw anymore.  But my rage and powerless imprisonment in this entire situation hasn’t gone away or subsided.  It’s just finding outlets when it can.  Hence driving for 45 minutes to get to Providence (the city in Rhode Island), fighting the traffic, navigate a mall, and finding a Dave and Buster’s on a day when all games are half off and all schools were out, all to find a DDR machine to play till my lungs were ready to collapse while my legs went on strike.  
 

I know I have to play the long game.  But what hurts is this paper cut bovine refuse.  Every word from the incubator, every moment I am here and not there, every time I can’t just talk to my own children is a paper cut.  Not lethal.  But persistent, painful, and every time you stretch or move, you can feel it.  This Gatekeeper, “I am God,” bit leaves me infuriated because there is simply nothing I can do.  And she knows it.  And yes I am making assumptions about everything with her, but I feel like somewhere inside her, she is just smiling and loving that she is winning everything and I am suffering.  Every moment she pulls this is a moment I have lost forever. 
 

My partner was discussing that with me.  They were bouncing ideas off.  They mentioned sending my son gifts through Steam since the incubator hadn’t blocked me there.  No messages.  No information.  Just a gift and “from me.”  And this is where the breakdown in the incubator’s logic simply pisses me off.  I told my partner that doesn’t matter.  I have known I could contact him through Steam for months.  I even told her I could when I was trying to meet all her points about trying to work on getting things put back together.  She’s apparently too ill educated in how Steam functions to have thought about it or blocked me as I told her she could do since she was going out of her way to block me on everything else.  It’s about absolute control.  Even if I sent him a game with absolutely no message on it and it simply said “from username,” she would flip out because she didn’t get to see it first.  She has me blocked in his phone.  When she deigns to allow him to message me, she unblocks me, lets him send a message, then immediately takes the phone back and blocks me again before he can see any potential response before she does.  She would blow up because he can’t receive a single hint of a whisper of a legend of a half remembered fairytale unless she sees it first.  In essence, he doesn’t know, but she’s holding him hostage.  He doesn’t see, hear, do, or engage in anything she can’t observe and completely control.  And she’s sculpting him into someone in her image.  Maybe not with her overt hatred of me, but, successful or not, she will die trying to keep him from accepting, understanding, and supporting anything LGTBQ+.

 

Sorry for my rant.  Thank you for reading any/all of it.

[Lenneth]

Correction:  Either Chrome, the website, or my iPhone absolutely refuse to let me type a B with a ) right after it without making it an emoji.  The only solution is to literally paste it in and post without typing anything.  As soon as you do, it turns back into the emoji.

 

She wanted to specifically shove in my face that she could deny me and verbally said I had no right to know and I wouldn’t find out.

[Lenneth]

Just now, Lenneth said:

Correction:  Either Chrome, the website, or my iPhone absolutely refuse to let me type a B with a ) right after it without making it an emoji.  The only solution is to literally paste it in and post without typing anything.  As soon as you do, it turns back into the emoji.

 

She wanted to specifically shove in my face that she could deny me and verbally said I had no right to know and I wouldn’t find out.

 

She wanted to specifically shove in my face that she could deny me and verbally said I had no right to know and I wouldn’t find out.

 

Nevermind.  Formatting wins.  This is my last attempt to post it the way I want it to show up.  Sorry for all the posts. 🙇🏻‍♀️

[Lenneth]

 

There.

[Jackie C.]

I got it sweetie. I do not care for your incubator very much. This whole thing reeks of being a trap that she plans to use to hurt you. Tread lightly. Be careful. Guard your heart as much as you can. I sincerely hope you can get some time with your son despite all of this. Try to be strong.

 

Hugs!

[Davie]

4 minutes ago, Jackie C. said:

I got it sweetie. I do not care for your incubator very much. This whole thing reeks of being a trap that she plans to use to hurt you. Tread lightly. Be careful. Guard your heart as much as you can. I sincerely hope you can get some time with your son despite all of this. Try to be strong.

 

Hugs!

Dear @Lenneth What Jackie said. And hugs. — Davie