There were days that I just didn't want to go home from work. As a matter of fact, I would even get sick in the car before I got home. I just didn't know if I could face another day of their cruelties. I never knew what was waiting for me upon my return to our home. It was always chaotic combined with some terrible news or behavior. I was sinking and they were hoping I would: Especially my ex who thought if he made it tough enough on me that I would fold and go back to him. The kids may have thought this very thing also. Nobody knew that my resolve was to never return at any price. Little did I know at the time that they were the price. It had been too terrible to repeat. I despised him and for good reason. I guess he thought otherwise and figured that he was irresistible. He thought wrong. He repulsed me. I did not miss anything about him. This only reinforced his rage and his continued obsession with me until the day he died some 15 years later.
One spring morning my walking buddy and I had decided to walk in the early morning because we both had work duties that would interfere with our usual evening walk. She called that morning to confirm and we set out for our exercise. As we turned the last corner on our journey my ex came up behind us in his car. He was following us home. My friend looked at me and asked me if he was ever going to leave me alone. She didn't know the half of it. I was wondering just how he knew that this is where I would be at this time. Only three people knew that I would be walking at this early hour; me, my friend and my daughter. I began to lose trust. I was alerted to the fact that he always knew more than he should about me but to accuse my daughter of a betrayal of this magnitude was hard to do without actual proof. My own child???? Heaven forbid. Things started to fall in that direction no matter how hard I fought against it.
On another morning when I had agreed to take her and her friend to school, I went out to find her and her friend standing by the car. They had obviously let the air out of my tires. The look of guilt on their faces was a give -away. I had an air can in my trunk and I fixed the problem. Whatever they had planned was no longer in play. But that didn't stop my daughter.
The next one was a biggie. I had a boyfriend, nothing serious but we did spend time together on weekends. He offered to take us to breakfast on one Sunday morning and we asked my daughter if she wanted to go with us. She accepted but had to go get ready in her room, he said he had to stop at the bank so she needed to hurry. When we arrived at the bank auto-teller there sat my ex waiting for us. I knew she had called him when she went back to her room. I kept still about it but I was mulling it over trying to figure out what to do. I had never dealt with this kind of skullduggery.
Meanwhile my son was acting like a hooligan and his new friends bothered me greatly. He was unruly in my absence but generally cooperative around me. I was trying to figure out if he was into drugs because his demeanor had changed so much but I could never find anything except my own weariness and suspicions to pin it to. If anyone knew of his delinquent behavior they weren't talking. I had this terrible feeling that I was being over-run in my own home. The loyalty that I had counted on from them was not there. They were old enough to understand who their father was and to be supportive of the woman who was supporting them but they refused to participate with me. I never dreamed I needed a babysitter for a 12 and 14 year old. I had stayed home at that age while my mom worked and never sought to betray her or malign her. It was awful.
My mother offered to buy my son a dirt bike so he could be like his friends. I thought it was wonderful and my son acted very grateful. Within a month we came home and the bike was gone. It was parked in our front yard and all but disappeared into thin air. He told me it was stolen and I could not for the life of me pick up on it. I would find out some 20 years later that he had actually sold it for the money and we were none the wiser. This was not the only thing that had disappeared over the years. My grandmother's wedding ring was missing, checks from the check drawer were missing, food was missing and given to some juvie delinquent down the street, my more fashionable clothes were missing; anything that was not nailed down was destined to disappear. Both kids were looting my house for anything of value to them. I was saddened. These were definitely more than some mischievous pranks. My son had turned duplicitous and had only acted like my loyal son for most of those years. He actually was two people, pretending to be trustworthy and to have feelings but behaving in a way that was absolutely in direct contradiction of these traits. How and when had things gone so terribly wrong? I was now strapped to three people whose defiance and misconduct was tearing our lives apart at the seams. What was worse was that they were enjoying it and would never consider stopping it. They were addicted to anything that would cause my demise. They were getting a high off of the experiences they were causing. While I was frantically trying to get them to make different choices they were bound and determined to emulate their father. They thought that their dad's power, greed, hostility and freedom from responsibility were to be admired. They thought my endeavors and patience showed weakness. They thought I was a fool.
The betrayals became bolder and bored deeper into my psyche. My ex kept breaking into my house while we were gone. I heard he had said he was going to burn us out. After these increasing threats to our safety, I had to take extra precautions over his invasions. I would stay awake all night sitting in darkness and watching my children and the house in case my ex would make good on his threats. I would sleep for a couple of hours before I had to get ready for work. I was exhausted but I didn't have a choice. We really were in danger from someone who didn't have control of himself. Something might tip his balance and he would be driven to the worst possible solution to his problems.
Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I drove up the driveway after work and saw the neighbor man standing in my front yard. He said he heard a gun-shot coming from my barn. My ex had been holding my son hostage in the barn but let him go as soon as I pulled up. I called the police and my son and I had to follow up with a prosecuting attorney. My son wouldn't talk and the case was dropped. What they weren't telling me was that my son had compromised his dad's equipment that was in the barn and my ex caught him. My ex really wasn't supposed to have left anything on the premises after the divorce but this was overlooked by the prosecutor since my son took out his frustrations on him in that way. My ex's lawyer said he could help him stay out of jail for a fee of $5,000 dollars. As soon as my ex was off the hook nothing could stop him from driving up in my yard, doing whatever he wanted to and pushing everything to the absolute limit. Harassment was a "go" word and there wasn't a day of peace after that. He gave my daughter a key to his house that she could use anytime she wanted to. Since he had managed to buy a house only a few blocks from the high school she could take complete advantage of this offer of freedom. She would take the bus into school, get off, and walk to her dad's house and chill alone or with her friends. He had convinced her that she didn't need an education because she would only end up like me, a poor collage educated idiot. I called him on this one, telling him to take back the key, but he only laughed and claimed her as his daughter in his likeness. Luckily, a mother of one of her friend's called the school and reported that her daughter was hanging out at his house and that ended that.
My daughter thought she was the queen of the household and tripped me up in every way possible. She thought she was in charge now and nothing would get by her. One day I spoke to my son about getting our fireplace insert out of the barn where my ex had stored it. I asked him if he and his friends could haul it up to the house so I could put it back in. It was getting cold and I wanted to get more heat in the house.
The boys hauled it up to patio. All of a sudden I heard some loud shouting outside and when I looked my ex was standing near the insert yelling at the kids to put it in his car. His car was in my back yard! This was the last straw, I looked at my daughter and she lied straight to my face. She said the guy who was going to reinstall the insert told her dad about it. I knew she had done it. She was not fooling me. She had torn us apart. I would play along for a long while but I knew she had a misguided soul. She had betrayed both my son and me and had intended to do it. She reported our every move back to her dad for something she wanted in return. Three months after her 18th birthday, I told her since she was continuing to play this game, I thought it would be best if she would go live with her father. She did, but it went over like a screen door on a submarine with her father. It proved one thing to me though, he wanted to use her for his malicious acts but he didn't want to raise her or provide for her in that way. She might cramp his style. He called me right away and threatened me. He said I had to pay him child support. I said NO and so he called the county and told them some lies about my property. Although, I was investigated on his false charges, I really didn't care. Funny, my daughter never figured out that sheltering her in his house was not in his plan. Through her brainwashed boozed up brain she clung to his power switch as her life line. In 3 more months she would be back living with me. I was hoping she had seen the light but that would never be. It was broken between us. I couldn't trust her. She was a dyed in the wool dangerous little narc. I wouldn't be sure until after my ex died. The only way I knew this was that her contemptable treatment of me and her malicious lies and gossip about me continued past his death. She was responsible for her own acts now. He wasn't forcing her any longer, if he ever had.
What was this phenomenon that blew through my home bringing a hurricane of violence and menacing to the extreme? Was it psychopathy or parental alienation? Was it inherited or nurtured? Was it delinquency or DNA? Was it forced or welcomed? Who were these three who hunted, persecuted and haunted me? Who were these three that saw me as a delicacy just waiting to be devoured by their insatiable insanity?
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