shishnit.org

I don’t like my son’s stepmother.  I would like to make it clear as to what the real issue for me is.  I forgive her for all the crap she personally did to me in the past.  I’m seriously over those things.  If she hadn’t done those things I would still be miserably living with a liar and sociopath.  She now has to do those things and that’s truly wonderful to me. My recent post about her was all about how she pretends to be one thing but is another.  She does not admit that she was married or he was married when they got together.  She doesn’t even admit this to her own family.  But they have church gatherings at their home.  I find this all to be somewhat ludicrous. 

I know that my life today is entirely different than my life of then.  The way I live now and the things I have now in my life are priceless.  I am more grateful because of all the things I have endured in my past. I don’t dismiss my past, but there is no future in the past.

I do not like her because she treats the most precious person in my life like a nuisance.  And that truly breaks my heart.  So I lash out.  I lash out not personally as I am never afforded a chance to express myself towards her.  I hear about how she makes my son feel directly from my son.  I get angry because she spends endless hours in church and then treats someone she should care about like crap.  If my ex and I did not have any children together I would not have to deal with him.

Divorce is the end of a marriage; it is unfortunately not the end of the relationship with your former spouse when you have children.  Not unless one party abandon’s their responsibilities to that child.  Fortunately for my son, that hasn’t happened. 

The worst part of divorce is that everyone is forced to deal with additional parties that they themselves did not choose.  It’s like being forced into a relationship with people you did not choose, but rather perhaps your ex-spouse chose.

I think my ex-husband could have chosen better.  Anyone at all would be better if they just treated my son with respect and kindness.  Anyone that had his best interests at heart would be better.  Anyone that even cared the slightest bit about him would be better.  Anyone else would be better.

If my ex-husband wished to speak to Rick about anything, anything at all…Rick would answer the phone and treat him with respect as he is the father of my child.  My ex-husband’s wife refuses to speak to me. How can that ever be good for my son?  She puts him in situations that make him uncomfortable, etc.  Only a selfish person treats a child like this.

She wanted my ex-husband.  She doesn’t want his child.  How is that love?

Sure I act catty and I have ill feelings towards her.  How can I not?  I do the best I can to encourage my son to get along with her.  To overlook her ill words. 

I could not keep him away from her if I tried…unless I wanted to completely remove my son’s father from the picture.  So long as he chooses to be married to her, then my son has to be subjected to her.  This is not my choice.  It is his.  We have joint custody and I like it that way because my son should not have to give up either parent, even if one of them chooses a bad spouse as his father has.  I believe my son has learned a lot from what he see’s via his father’s second marriage.  He also has learned what being happy will do for a person because he’s seen a transformation in his mother.

His father is not a bad one, he just married poorly and he’s too weak to take control.  I’m not ever going to be in a position to take control of a bad stepmother unless I want to remove my son from his father’s life.  If anyone thinks that’s a good idea then they are just being selfish and dismissive.

I barely speak about my child these days because while there are issues, every divorce comes with them, I have learned to feel fortunate that my son has a father who loves and cares for him immensely.  There is no perfect world.  In a perfect world I would find my ex-husband a nice wife who cares about him and his child equally.  I would pick someone that doesn’t treat him like a child and mandate what he can do with his money.  I would pick someone…anyone better than her.

I’m happy.  Even he deserves to be happy.  I can’t imagine that he is.  He cannot speak openly and freely to me if his wife is there.  That indicates to me that there are issues bigger than I’ll ever fix for him.  I simply can’t.

I can stand in front of Rick and talk to my ex-husband. I don’t have anything to hide and I can be myself in front of anyone and everyone.  My husband doesn’t have jealousy issues, etc.  The other day I noticed a picture frame in the library.  It’s an old picture frame that I never threw away because it has pictures of my son as a baby in it.  It’s a multiple picture frame and also has a picture of one of my dogs I loved for a long time.  There are two photos’ in it of myself and the ex-husband from when I was 20 years old, one of them being from our trailer trash reception with the crappy yellow cake his mother bought us.  Those pictures are old of course.  The frame was on a pile of stuff.  I noticed the other day that Rick placed it on a library shelf in the library facing forward like all the other picture frames.  Surely he saw the pictures.  But he’s obviously ok with it.  I had a life before him, he’s well aware and secure with it all.  That’s a lovely thing to have, I appreciate it in ways that other’s may not.  He knows I love him, that I am living in the now.  That life goes on and that those chapters in my life are over but the book is still who I am.  Rick never said a word to me about that picture frame.  He simply placed it on the shelf and moved on.  That’s what a mature person does.

If my son’s stepmother did that my son would be so blessed for that act of maturity.  Instead he has a stepmother that won’t even allow him to have a picture of himself and his mother in his own bedroom.  Because if you pretend I never existed it will make you feel better?  I just don’t get it and so it all angers me….and I can’t direct that anger towards her or work anything out with her.  IE: the frustration.

My son is an amazing kid and deserves better.  But I can’t make other peoples choices.  I allow my son to have a father, because that’s the right thing to do.  Along with that….he gets a stepmother that his father chose.  Not I.  That choice is not mine.  I don’t care about the Internet’s opinion either.  Divorce is never without ongoing issues when there are children involved.