The Agony of Being Apart From My Daughters

Tonight is one of those nights in which the heart-rendering pain of not being with my daughters seems almost unbearable.  I’ve spent the better part of the past 2 weeks devouring books dedicated to my recovery so that I can more quickly get myself in a position to be an available father to them, but of course it’s not that simple.

I’m embroiled in a ridiculous custody fight with my ex-wife, their mother, because she’s taking advantage of my episode of distress that resulted in suicidal ideations.  I never had any intent, plan, or anything truly resembling a true thought of suicide, though.  My ex and I spent 16 years together, and she knows without question that I’m not a threat to those girls.

Yet that didn’t stop her from an emergency petition to the court… over a week after I had already stabilized and stupidly asked her for help.  Instead of help she took the opportunity to rip me from those girls’ lives for reasons I still struggle to grasp.

I’ve placed myself in her shoes, and I nevertheless cannot understand why she’s doing this.  I realize that she’s functioning off of the still-raw emotions of our relationship imploding.  It’s clear that reason and logic are not at the forefront of her thought processes.  Regardless of the actual reasons she’s doing this to her own daughters, concern for our daughters’ safety is not truly one of them.

If that were, in fact, the case then my ex would not allow her own mother near those girls.  Their maternal grandmother has recklessly neglected them such that my eldest ended up with searing burns across her forehead due to her hair catching fire from a scented candle her grandmother lit the child’s bedroom and then proceeded to egregiously leave the girls unattended.

This woman also violently shakes the girls by the shoulders such that their heads snap back and forth… all because they didn’t do their math worksheets properly. 

She browbeats them with religious zealotry such that my 4 year old has nightmares about satan waiting for her in the basement because she sinned earlier that day.

She has physically attacked me in front of each girl in public so bad that they hid from sight because they were so scared that she was going to hurt me… which is sort of comical in one respect considering I’m more than a foot taller and easily outweigh her by 80 lbs.  Yet 4-year olds don’t perceive things that way.

They are also regularly locked in their bedrooms at night with a plastic bucket of a toilet in the middle of their room because their mother and grandmother can’t be bothered with middle-of-the-night potty needs.  You should see the looks of terror on their faces when they had overnights with me and thought I would do the same thing.

If a babysitter had done any one of these things, much less all of them, no responsible parent would ever allow their children to be supervised by that sitter again.  I’ve never touched the girls with aggression, have never locked them up in anyway, have never neglected them or left them in danger’s way, or anything approaching what they’ve experienced with their mother or grandmother.

Yet I find myself being publicly accused as a potential danger to them.  This plays into my emotional wreckage because I’m so aggrieved at the plain inequity of the situation.  I can only imagine what my ex would have done if I had ever done anything like that which their grandmother has already done to them.  The fact is that it’s not remotely in my constitution to ever harm those girls in any fashion.

I’m not claiming to be the perfect father.  I have overzealously yelled at them when they hit each other or place themselves in danger.  I’m not excusing my yelling at them because I should have had more control than that.  I have said things that I wish I had not like seemingly every parent has done at some point or another.  However, I’ve always owned what I did wrong, explained to them that what I said or how I said it was wrong, and apologized for it.

My upbringing in a home of constant physical and psychological abuse did not prepare me for being a father, and it actually placed me at a significant disadvantage.  That’s also not an excuse and this knowledge is why I have consumed parenting books and studies to offset that disadvantage.  I’ve taken parenting classes of my own volition and continue to seek out parenting advice from professionals every chance I get.  I am committed to breaking the chain of abuse in my family in spite of what happens when they’re with their mother or grandmother.

All of these issues swirl around in my mind as I try to grasp how I allowed myself to be subject to the vindictive whims of my ex, but I need to constantly remind myself that this is not completely my fault.  I cannot control their mother’s actions against me and the collateral damage it causes my daughters.

I was a stay-at-home father with these girls for almost 2 years.  They are so accustomed to having me as a regular and integral part of their lives, so it’s not just how I feel because of how badly I pine to be with them.  It’s all so compounded by the realization of how this must be impacting them.   It has to be beyond confusing for them to suddenly not have contact with me beyond phone calls.

They are resilient and wonderfully adept for girls of their ages, 4 and 6, so I take comfort in that fact.  I’ve been reassured that there will not be any long-term damage to them or our bond primarily because of how close we’ve been given the extended time I spent raising them.  This entire period of time apart will likely amount to no more than a few months, but it already feels like multiple eternities. 

I try to cognitively reassure myself that many children spend extended periods of time away from their parents and are essentially none the worse for it.  My background as an “honorary” military brat (my father was medically retired from the army at 25 so I grew up around the base and with other brats) has shown me that kids can spend a year at a time without their father and get past it.

Yet that knowledge only helps so much with the emotional suffering I’ve occasionally experienced over the past month and a half.  I know that this is simply a temporary state of affairs until the judge has sufficient cover to re-instate my time with them.  A guardian ad litem has been appointed as essentially a lawyer for the girls to help the judge determine that I’m not any measure of a threat to them.

Simply typing those words, “threat to them,” strikes me in the heart like bolt of heat lightning.  It’s just so inconceivable that anyone who knows anything about me and my girls could ever legitimately connect the idea of a threat and me together in regards to them. 

This is a time for me to continue working on myself as a person and a father.  I need to focus on utilizing the time which otherwise would have been spent continuing to build upon our bond together so that when they’re back with me it will be an even better experience than it might have been.  I believe if I continue to focus on this aspect of the situation that I will continue to effectively handle this emotional agony.