Father’s Day

I was planning on writing a scathing Father’s Day message to my children’s father but I don’t have the heart to do it now.  Every time I begin it comes out all wrong.  I would like to reiterate that Harley gushes that my husband is a “great dad”!  Again, I think it really needs to be your own children making that assessment and not your mistress but what do I know?  I will say I don’t think great fathers screw up their kids’ lives the way CF has screwed up Picasso’s and Rock Star’s.  I don’t think great fathers move their kids across the country, asking them to leave friends and teammates behind and giving up everything they’ve ever known for this shot at a better life only to turn around and begin an affair less than a year later.  I don’t think great fathers move seven hours away from their kids after moving them to a new state.  I don’t think great fathers ignore their kids or constantly give them their sob story in the hopes that said child will feel sorry for them.  Great dads don’t force their kids to move AGAIN two years after taking everything away from them.  I would say a great dad cares about his kids.  He makes sure they have everything they need and a lot of what they want.  A great dad talks to his kids, communicates with them, knows what’s going on in their lives.  A great dad cares if his actions are hurting his kids and ruining their lives.  I’ve said more than a few times that the biggest difference between his tears and mine is that when I’m crying I’m crying for my kids.  When he cries, he’s crying for himself.

He’s good at it, too.  I’m not sleeping well.  My mind is constantly running, thinking of everything that needs to get done and how else he can possibly fuck me over. One morning I was in bed, trying to go back to sleep because it was probably 4 or 5 in the morning, and I’m thinking, “Maybe if I had done this… Maybe if I had made the kids be nicer to him once they found out…  Maybe if I had demanded they talk to him… Maybe if I had been nicer after I discovered everything that he was doing… then all of this wouldn’t be happening.”  I think he is spiraling down again and here I am, like an idiot, trying to reexamine all of my actions and wondering if I handled it inappropriately and somehow have something to do with this.  Thankfully, I bat those thoughts away.  I am able to see that once again he does whatever he wants to do and we are all left to dance for him, trying to keep him happy.  The only person not responsible for his happiness is himself.  I keep telling myself that he brought all of this upon himself.  He CHOSE this.  Frankly, I don’t think he has anything to be unhappy about! He left me, the root of all of his unhappiness.  He is with Harley and therefore isn’t going through this divorce alone.  She’s supposedly the love of his life; she makes him happy!  What happened, Harley?  Why isn’t he happy anymore?  He gave his poor little sad sausage story about hating it out in our former state, how he felt so isolated and away from everyone.  So we moved here, to Whoreville, for his dream job.  Not more than three months into it, he decides he doesn’t like his dream job after all.  I know he told Picasso he hated his job here back in August when his affair was first discovered.  So he quit this “dream job” to go work side by side with Blockhead, which was another dream of his.  He even managed to get a promotion.  So again, what in the hell does he have to be unhappy about?  New woman that makes him happy?  Check.  New dream job working with his bestie?  Check.  New state?  Check.

The only two pieces of the puzzle that aren’t perfect are the kids and the support.  Well, as Joe Kenda would say, “My, my, my.”  I told him the kids would not be happy.  I told him that the first time around.  I told him about the conversation Rock Star and I had had when she told me some guy at the gym scared her.  It turned out the guy had done nothing except smile at her but he looked like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and that scared her.  I told her that if some guy who looked like Dwayne Johnson smiled at me I’d be saying, “Hello there!”  She was appalled.  “Mom, if you ever cheated on my dad I wouldn’t have anything to do with you!  I’d go live with him when you divorced.”  I asked what would happen if it were the other way around and she told me she wouldn’t have anything to do with him, then.

When he admitted that Harley wanted to know how our kids would get along and if they would like her I point blank told him, “Rock Star would hate her.  She wouldn’t get along with her kids.  She would want nothing to do with them.”  He then went on to say he knew that and he even told her that the kids were definitely closer to me.  So he knew.  And yet he still did it and he’s still acting like he’s shocked that they are not all over him with hugs and kisses and telling him how much they love him.

That leaves money.  Sorry, but leaving your wife of twenty plus years, who has stayed home and followed you all around the country so you could climb the corporate ladder, is not going to be cheap.  I’d also like to point out that maybe if he hadn’t been so damn dishonest with his lawyer she could have prepared him better.  Smart boy conveniently left out any mention of a bonus, stocks, or dividend checks when giving her his salary.  He went strictly by monthly when they use gross annual here.

Here’s where I really go off the deep end.  I sometimes think I shouldn’t have been so nonchalant those first four months before our court date.  I really don’t like telling anyone what’s going to happen and then have it not happen.  So I played my cards very close to my vest.  Maybe if I had laid things out for him earlier he wouldn’t have had such a shock when the temporary court orders came down.  Then I have to tell myself that it is not my problem.  I’m sure those four months where he was giving me less than half of what he made, expecting me to pay all the bills with that money, while he took the other half of his paycheck and just played with it, spending recklessly on Harley and her kids, were the happiest four months of his life.  He had no bills, no rent to pay, not a care in the world.  Not enough money to buy groceries for the kids?  That’s ok.  Get a job, Sam!  Contribute to the family.  Or just use some of that money you took out of our joint account, you know, the money that was supposed to be used to pay off the damn pool.  He had plenty of money and yet he never bought our kids anything extra.  It all went to them.  Now he’s reaping what he sowed; unfortunately, he’s taking me and my kids down with him.

I know there is no purpose behind this and obviously I will never actually ask him these things but sometimes I want to ask him:  Are Harley’s kids suffering?  Has their lifestyle gone down the drain?  Do her kids have to move?  Does her daughter have to give up everything the way your daughter has to give up everything- once again?  Will her kids be transferring schools and starting all over?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

On that note, I told Rock Star yesterday about the situation.  She is, of course, devastated.  She just found out she got her first job.  She is crazy about a boy from her youth group.  Obviously I wouldn’t stay simply for a 16 year old’s romance, especially considering she is usually tired of them within a few months anyway.  But nonetheless she has a new boyfriend and she hates the idea of leaving him behind.  As expected she’s not all that unhappy about having to give up cheerleading, but she is very upset about no longer doing gymnastics and not getting to be team captain. She hates the fact that she doesn’t get to finish out high school here, at HER high school.  She doesn’t want to start over.  She told me that now she’s not going to have any friends again.  I told her she would make new friends and as expected she replied, “I don’t want new friends.  I want my friends here,” as she cried.

Picasso, bless his heart, is so much more laid back.  He’s disappointed that I have already paid the marching band fee and he’s disappointed that he’s already done a lot of work on a costume he wanted to take to a convention in a few months.  But aside from that he’s pretty nonchalant.  “Why bother getting mad about it?  It’s not going to change anything, Mom.  Just go with it.”  It’s funny, though, because even if he didn’t have that attitude I wouldn’t be nearly as worried about him.  He’s my child that hasn’t particularly cared for living in our current state.  Rock Star was taken under a teacher’s wing and introduced to her daughter and her daughter’s friends.  She has skyrocketed.  Popular, athletic, easily noticed.  All the boys like her.  She has tons of friends and is a star on the cheerleading and gymnastic teams.  But Picasso has had a harder time of it.  He’s not athletic.  He has a quirky sense of humor and a very matter-of-fact personality.  He has good friends in the neighborhood and he’s fitting in more and more at school but it’s never been on the same level as his sister.  Plus, he is transitioning in eighth grade, not his junior year.  He’s going to have 5 years to acclimate.  She will have two.  He can still participate in marching band if he wants to.  He won’t miss any of it because I don’t believe they can participate until freshman year.  She, on the other hand, no longer has gymnastics and I doubt she’ll do cheer.  So it’s going to be a total switch- Picasso is probably going to make a lot of new friends and fit right in, while Rock Star loses everything.  That sounds like something a great dad would want for his kids, doesn’t it?