Just Like Old Times

I don’t write about Jerry Lee much anymore. Truth be told there isn’t a lot to say lately and I don’t want my blog to dwell on him and his atrocities. I mean, if he does something especially stupid or heinous I’ll talk about it. Like when he wanted a ticket to Rock Star’s college graduation, or tells her how he’d love to walk her down the aisle. Aside from that though he’s not a popular topic on this blog. I’m concentrating on other things, like my life.

But today I just have to get this off my chest. I hate his fucking guts. I hate that he got to just blithely skip away from his old life. I hate that he got to pick up with his cousin/whore and her $5000/month take home pay. I hate the fact that she is able to simply get rid of any of her children that are difficult or don’t want to play happy family. And I hate that I hate that because I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to run away from my kids. I don’t want to abandon them and start all over with someone new. But I also hate that I’ve been left holding down the fort.

I’ve done it for so long it’s natural, like breathing. I don’t even think about it. I was the one who had to break the news to our kids that we were getting a divorce. I was the one left to answer their questions- questions I didn’t even have answers for. I was the one that had to do my best to convince them that no matter what happened we would be okay.

He moved out one day without saying a word and I was none the wiser until my alimony and child support wasn’t deposited into my account. I was the one who had to call around and ask his boss if he was still there. I was the one left having to admit to both kids that he had moved to another state.

I was the one who had to break the news that we had to move when he lost his damn job. He was fine. He had a whore to comfort and support him and he didn’t have to say a damn thing to the kids he left behind.

I am the one that knows that Rock Star had only recently found out she was going to be the gymnastics team captain and she had to give that up. I’m the one that knows she was destined to be in the high school’s Hall of Fame and that he fucked that up for her by forcing us to move. I’m the one that was there when it dawned on her that gymnastics was over for her.

I’m the one who knew Picasso was going to join marching band and that he had been receiving some very positive feedback from the camp he attended.

I was the one who had to tell Rock Star she couldn’t get her license and in fact, had to start over from scratch with a learner’s permit.

I was the one taking her to the local high school to get her signed up for classes in case her transfer didn’t go through. I’m the one who saw how disappointed she was at what she was going into. I’m the one that saw my happy, radiant, upbeat girl turn into a glum, withdrawn child. I’m the one who heard her say, “I used to be someone. Now I’m nobody.” I’m the one who held her while she cried.

I will never forgive him for taking her away from her school. Twenty fucking plus years I listened to him whine about being moved around all the time and never going to the same school twice until high school. What does he do to his daughter, his pride and joy? He cheats on her mother after moving us 2000 miles across the country, cuts us off financially, and then loses his fucking job he took to be closer to the whore, thereby forcing us to move and forcing his daughter to switch high schools midway through.

I will never forgive him for taking gymnastics away from her either.

I’ll never forgive him for essentially robbing both of us of her senior year and being able to go on multiple college visits. I was too damn poor during her junior and first part of her senior year. That left us with about 3 months for her to look around before needing to make a decision. We ended up going on two visits- one in Utah and one at Ball State.

I hate him for taking me away from my kids. I feel like I lost out on the end of their childhood because I was working.

Most of all I hate him for all the destruction he left behind for me to clean up. I’m the one paying for the therapy bills for both kids. Because he fucked with their heads just abandoning them one day. See ya! Only he didn’t even have the balls to say that much. I’m the one that paid Rock Star’s tuition or rent. He gave her the rest of the money she needed to buy a laptop her freshman year- around $400, I think. That was the extent of his contribution. I’m the one paying the psychiatrist bills for Picasso. I’m the one paying for the fucking insurance.

Did I mention my company has absolute shit insurance? I pay just over $200 each paycheck for my insurance alone. My family deductible is $6000. I never reach my deductible which means I always pay out of pocket for everything. Except most of my kids’ meds. Those are generally covered, or a large portion is covered for some reason. So because I have a huge deductible I also have $200 out of each paycheck deposited into my HSA account for medical and dental bills.

Why on earth my lawyer did not urge me to consider having him cover them I will never know. What I do know is while you’re going through a divorce you’re not supposed to make any changes to your insurance. Yes, he got fired so none of us were insured. But once he finally got a job he should have been insuring us. He didn’t and it fell to me- the person making all of $11.50 an hour at the time. Of course, I didn’t put $200 in my HSA at that time either. That started almost 2 years ago when all of the therapy started.

I was so close to essentially getting almost a $400 raise per month once Rock Star and Picasso were off of my insurance. Picasso has insurance through the union and Rock Star will have insurance through her job. Now? Who the hell knows?

Picasso is not doing well and it once again falls to me to take care of everything because Daddy Dearest can’t be bothered. He passed along these fucked up genes, and he’s the one that caused a cataclysmic upheaval in their lives. Where is he?

Oh, he’s off living his best fucking life in Georgia with the whore and the one child she has left.

Again, 99.9% of the time I just take care of it because what’s the other option? I can bitch about it but that won’t change anything. Jerry Lee doesn’t care. If it’s going to get done then I’ll need to do it. They need one sane parent and I’m it.

Picasso’s career in carpentry is not off to a stellar start. His first job was fantastic. Unfortunately he’s beginning to think that was an outlier. Also unfortunate was the fact that it only lasted maybe a month.

His second job was a nightmare. His boss was a complete ass. I’m not simply an overbearing mama who thinks her child is an angel. My brother, after hearing the stories Picasso finally told, started making phone calls to people he knew trying to find this guy. He was ready to kick his ass. This guy would call Picasso retarded. Literally would say that. He told him he should just quit, that he wasn’t cut out for this. He would tell other people, “You’ll need to tell this guy twice. He’s slow.” He was absolutely awful. Other people- journeymen even- have complained about this person to the union.

As you might imagine this took quite the toll on his already fragile mental health. At one point he was sitting on the couch and I noted that he looked absolutely miserable. He told me then he didn’t know what to do and he had nothing to live for. Basically he tries to tell himself that things are looking up but then they come crashing down again, and this asshole he was working for reinforced everything Picasso’s brain tells him- he’s worthless, he’s stupid, etc. He didn’t want to go on living. He thought that was the only way to stop the pain.

I was the one talking to my child. I was the one holding him and crying. I was the one begging him to hang on and assuring him that things would get better all while telling him that I would never, ever, ever get over him killing himself. I’ve always been the one. It all falls on me and sometimes it is exhausting.

It seems nothing helps. He never improves.

He was doing better once he was no longer at job #2. Two weeks later he takes his third job. That one was fine but it was very short-lived- 2 or 3 weeks. He found out at the beginning of this job he had enough hours to be an apprentice, moving up from a pre-apprentice.

Then he was out of work for about 6 weeks. Now he’s working at a steel mill. He had 2 okay days but they are now working 12 hour days, 7 days a week. And when I say 12 hours I really mean 12.5 hours because they have a half an hour for lunch. Did I mention he drives an hour to and from work? So he leaves at 6:15 in the morning and doesn’t get home until after 9:30 at night. On top of that everyone expects him to know what to do and they are already talking shit about him because he doesn’t. I don’t think they realize he’s been an apprentice for approximately 80 hours and those 80 hours were spent doing concrete.

I don’t think this job is going to work out. I’m not sure joining the union is going to work out for him. He got into it because he wanted to build stuff and he hasn’t had a single job like that. There’s been flooring, drywall, concrete, and now scaffolding.

His mental health is taking another nosedive and guess who is here for the fallout? That’s right! It’s me! Where is Daddy? Well, we’ve already determined he’s in Georgia living his best life with his new family.

Picasso’s insurance through the union kicked in in August. I still have him on mine because I’m afraid to take him off. I don’t know how much longer he will be employed. I don’t know if he’s going to stick with the union. If I take him off now I can put him back on, I believe, when our open enrollment comes around next month. Then he’ll only be without insurance for two months. Frankly, I would say, “Fuck the insurance,” but he meets with a therapist every other week and a psychiatrist once a month, plus he takes medications. The therapist and psychiatrist visit I could handle. The meds are much more expensive per month out of pocket than what I would pay for insurance.

He was also supposed to start paying for his phone and his car insurance starting in January. Now I’m not sure that any of that will happen.

The psychiatrist did order a cheek swab a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to help her better determine which medications will work better for him, based on his metabolism, or something like that. It has to do with how your body metabolizes medications. I do know that much.

Truthfully it’s hard to tell what all came first. Was Picasso always a time bomb waiting to explode? Or did Jerry Lee moving us across the country when Picasso was 12 start everything off? Would Picasso have had issues regardless, or did they stem from his father abandoning him when he was 13? Say what you will but I tend to think when he tells me his brain tells him he’s worthless and no one likes him that having your father walk out on you without saying a word kind of reinforces that message. Or maybe that act sent the original message and he’s never been able to disregard it. Maybe he would have had issues anyway, but if he had a father around, one who supposedly had gone through all of this himself, he would have had an easier path.

I’m tired. I’m tired of the therapy bills and the psychiatrist bills that keep adding up but never seem to do anything for him. I’m tired of wondering if my kid is ever going to be happy, or at least content. I’m tired of wondering if he will ever be self sufficient. I’m tired of being left to deal with all of this on my own. I’d like both of my kids to be off of my payroll in January or February of 2023, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen. And I feel guilty for even expressing that. What kind of mother doesn’t want to take care of her kids forever? If anything ever happened to my son I know I would be saying I would pay a therapist every week if it brought him back to me. I would be begging for all of my old bills to haunt me once again if it meant he was here with me.

So I’m back to hating Jerry Lee. He left and left me to deal with cleaning up his entire mess. Oh, he did tell me he loved Picasso very much and offered to speak to his therapist and gave me the name of his latest medication which has seemingly helped him (Jerry Lee). Wow- so big of him. That was what- 30 seconds of giving a fuck about his son? I’ve spent hours listening to this kid talk about how he hates his life and how his mind is fucked up and he doesn’t believe he’ll ever be happy anymore. I’ve done the work to find a therapist, find a psychiatrist. I’ve spent thousands on insurance, and additional thousands on the therapist, psychiatrist, and meds. I’ve counseled him on questions to ask his psychiatrist. I’ve offered to sit in on a visit with him and his therapist, or even psychiatrist. I’ve even considered in-patient therapy.

Don’t even get me started on school. I hate his cousin fucking guts for leaving me to do battle with Picasso throughout his entire school career but especially his four years of high school. Every damn day was a battle it felt like. I wasn’t sure he was going to graduate and I was pretty sure I could not deal with another year of high school on his behalf. The kid didn’t take his fucking English final and had to have it unlocked by the teacher. “Whatever will be will be, Mom.” That was what I was dealing with while Jerry Lee was off in Georgia with his cousin.

I hate him for taking my daughter away from me, too. I have no doubt that if we were still living in Virginia she wouldn’t be living with her boyfriend. She’d be living at home. She’d look forward to coming home so she could see her high school friends. She had no friends up here for the most part. There was nothing for her. She was home for the summer after her freshman year and it was wonderful having her back. My mom and I both enjoyed our conversations we would have with her after she got off work. She was home for the summer after her sophomore year although this summer wasn’t nearly as wonderful. She spent long weekends down in Muncie with her boyfriend and/or her best friend from college, and if she wasn’t down there then one of them was up here. After that summer she moved into her apartment by herself. She didn’t need my help, although my mom and I came down a week or so later to bring the rest of her things. I had no idea that was the last time she would ever live with me.

He robbed me of my child. He chose to leave her. He chose to exit her life. I didn’t. I thought I would have at least 1 more summer, and when we realized she wouldn’t graduate in the spring because she applied later for nursing school I thought I might have 2 more summers with her. At one point she said she was going to work up here for at least 2 years so I was going to get 2 summers and 2 additional years!

Now she has a five year plan that sees her and her boyfriend buying the house they’re living in and staying in Muncie for 5 years.

Of course, that doesn’t affect Jerry Lee. Did I mention he lives in Georgia? I have? Oh, did I mention he hasn’t seen her since her high school graduation in 2018? Four years. He could drive down to see his cousin every weekend but he has been unable to drive up to see either of his children in years- 4 years for Rock Star and 6 years for Picasso.

I could go on and on about the myriad of reasons I hate Jerry Lee. I hate him for taking away my financial security. I hate that because of him I constantly worry about retirement and what that’s going to look like for me. I hate him for letting me put in a pool only for me to find out 6 days after it was filled that he was a cousin fucking cheater. I hate him for letting our house go into foreclosure, leaving me and our kids with nothing. I hate him for putting me in a situation where I had to leave everything behind. I hate him for not paying me for so long that my poor Beauregard suffered because I couldn’t take him to the vet sooner to find out he had cancer. I hate him for everything. But mostly I hate him for what he did to our kids and then leaving me to do all of the heavy work to try to clean up his mess.

I’ve got bad news for him, although he couldn’t care less. It will never be clean. These stains will last a life time.