I have learned that saying Never is a waste of my breath. I have moved no less than 5 times since I began saying I will never move again, I love this house. I have talked about things I banished from my mind. I have done things I promised myself I never would consider. I have shocked myself and I have grown because the one thing that changed is that I learned you can Never Say Never and mean it.
But like the first line in the song "Some things we don't talk about", and I am breaking that rule once here for those who are curious. I have been asked several times why my ex is never mentioned even casually in anything that I write...simply put, he is a non-person to me. I have no feeling either good or bad, I have no thoughts about him at all. I don't have room in my heart for hate and he doesn't deserve any of my energy or emotions. He is nothing. He did it to himself.
We were married for 8 years. There wasn't a lot of fighting (that I remember) but there were two significant things that come to mind when I think of him. Firstly, he was very hard on my son. He was a rambunctious kid, full of energy that he needed to learn to channel appropriately. It wasn't okay to play baseball in the house, but rather than holler and punish him - take him outside and teach him to throw at a target. Pick up a glove and be a dad! Secondly, involved my daughter. Her and I were sitting on the chesterfield one evening and I was listening to her practicing reading. My mind wandered and as I looked at her beautiful and innocent face I thought "I can't have her marrying someone like dear old dad." That night after the kids went to bed, I asked him to leave. It was Hallowe'en and he didn't leave until January. He said he couldn't find a place, but it was like he wasn't living with us. He wasn't involved with the kids any longer in any way. By his choice I might add.
Once he moved out it was a bit better. Things were pretty amicable, he would come and pick up the kids every weekend. Then the kids who were 7 and 8 at the time decided that they wanted every other weekend instead so they could spend some time with their neighbourhood and school friends too. He was okay with that. Then there was a weekend that my son couldn't go because he was at a sleepover birthday party and when he came to pick her up my daughter wouldn't go without her brother. He did not hide his frustration with this unexpected turn of events and suggested that I was unduly influencing the kids to avoid him. But in reality, I encourage them to maintain their relationship with him and his new friend. It was the new friend who according to the kids put me down in front of them and wanted the kids to accept her over me. The kids were uncomfortable. I told him. Since he wasn't providing any financial support, his physical support was all that I was getting.
Returning to full-time employment proved to be a bigger challenge than I expected, and after struggling with contract and supply jobs, the best I could find for full-time work was evenings. That didn't make much sense, since I would never see the kids with us being on opposite schedules and child care costs would eat up any wages I earned. So I started looking at the possibility of moving - even though the home built with my design specifications and swearing I would never move. I began to apply for jobs in Halifax, Toronto area and Thunder Bay. I told the kids that where ever I got a job is where we would move. My son was hoping for Thunder Bay so he could play hockey and ski/snowboard. Golf and baseball, he figured he could do anywhere.
The job offer came from Mississauga. We came so I could interview in the early part of the summer and went back to Nova Scotia to pack up. I was to start with the school board in September. I left my cousin with the daunting task of finding some where affordable for us to live. It would have to be a rental since I didn't think I could secure the sale of the house in less than two months. That summer was crazy, between Chris' baseball games we had garage sales to sell furniture that we didn't think we could take with us. Friends came in shifts to help us pack. The house was put up for sale and rent. I hired the real estate agent as my property manager - big mistake, he eventually screwed me, but that's another story.
Anyways, the plan was the ex would drive the 27' U-Haul truck to Ontario while towing his car so he would have a way back. For his services, I would pay for his meals and he would share a bed with his son in the hotel room. I would be following in my own vehicle. Barely a week before departure, he called me with his new terms and conditions. He was bringing his lady-friend and would require his own hotel room. Additionally, the stuff and children who had the option of being in the cab of the truck was no longer possible because he was also bringing her dog. So I gave him the boot and after some scrambling ended up taking a crash course on driving a 27' standard transmission truck towing a full-sized four-door sedan. That trip came with its own challenges and stories. I'll save it for another day :) In any case, we arrived and settled into our new life. An even longer story is that of how we got divorced and it is one even I wouldn't believe if I hadn't lived through it.
I used to be a firm believer in karma. I don't have to seek revenge on you because eventually you will screw yourself. As it was with the ex. I never spoke badly about him to the kids, he just never came up in conversation at all. In the beginning he called the kids on a regular basis and loved to talk with him. But they never picked up the phone to call him nor did they when we lived locally. I encouraged him to call the kids and not rely on them. Then I guess paranoia got the best of him or his lady-friends dislike for someone she didn't know fueled his anger, I don't know what happened. But phone calls got more infrequent. Kids birthdays were ignored. His lady wrote a letter to them telling them what a bad mother I was. The kids knew that he didn't pay support (I couldn't lie about that, we were struggling financially). The son still idolized his father but the daughter and I had different talks about him.
She had written him off when he told her during a telephone conversation that I never wanted her, was upset when I became pregnant and wanted an abortion. Luckily, she knew that this was all a fabrication, but she held it inside for a long time...hurting. I believe that is the last conversation that she had with him, she was about 11 years old. The son never really made his feelings about his father known but I could hear in his words and see in his actions that his father was slowly but surely being knocked off that pedestal that he was on. My biggest fear with him was that he would repair his relationship with his father while he spent four years at University less than 40 minutes way from where his father still lived. In fact, he did not make any effort to connect at all.
So to the three of us now, he is a non-person. With the exception of one of us, we wish him no ill-will, we just don't care either way. The only thing I can guarantee is than he will never hurt you unless you let him. Don't give him that power! I don't know how a person can father children for nearly a decade, day in and day out and then come to a point where you can pretend that they never were. It does take a real man to be a father...he was a sperm donor. We should assign him a number! Zero...nothing...naught...nil
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