Captaining my soul

Trauma porn with a soft gooey candy center

Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash

Note to you, my lovely readers: Whew! This one was a bit rough to write. I've been kicking this story around in my head and then putting it off when it came time to write it all down. It seemed like an impossible and daunting task and I wasn't sure how I would feel afterwards. Whether I could even accurately convey the things I wanted to. With this one, we are dipping into some of the really sensitive stuff that's been rattling around this rusty brain pan for too damn long. I just found out that my story about Richard affected someone negatively to the point that they couldn't finish reading it. I apologize sincerely and humbly if that is the case for anyone else. That being said, trigger warning is implied for sensitive topics. I hope you enjoy it. My advice? It seems really sad and hopeless in a few points. Fear not, dear readers, it is not just another dose of trauma porn. It is trauma porn with a heart and a smile and hopefully even a little bit of educational value as a bonus!

I'm going to gloss over a whole lot of the granular details for the sake of brevity. If I wrote all of the shit out, it would have to be a novel. So I'm going to hit the high (low?) points. Also, I don't think I am capable of digging into certain parts of that story too deeply yet. There is a lot of pain there, and it needs to be bled out slowly like releasing the pressure valve on a steam boiler. Some of that pain belongs only to me, at least for now.

In essence, what kicked off the shit storm was that my husband JP got caught cheating. When I say cheating, I mean massively cheating. This was no mere isolated incident. He left his Gmail open one fateful day and when I went to log into mine, there it all was, laid out neatly for me. Hundreds and hundreds of covert hookups, stretching back for the entirety of our relationship. We had been together more than 3 years and I didn't suspect a single goddamn thing. I was blindly in love with the man. And holy shit, I told everyone about it all the damn time too. How wonderful he was. How lucky I was. How I had really gotten a bum deal with the first one but scored a jackpot on the second one. Excuse me. I need to lie down. Or stick a fork in a light socket. Maybe both. So embarrassing when I think back on what a total fucking sucker I was.

Anyway, after he was confronted with his dick dealing ways, he kind of, well…he kind of lost his ever loving fucking mind. He could sense that I had a foot out the door and he was so incredibly desperate to keep me there. I could see that. I could also see he wasn't sorry at all because he continued to lie and cheat even after he got caught. Right before I caught him, I had undergone an emergency bowel resection surgery, which left me dealing with a colostomy bag. My son was still just a toddler, which complicated the situation even further. To say our home life was a fucking disaster would be to put it very kindly. I didn't have anywhere else to go. My family was all in Oregon, and I KNEW I didn't want to go back to Oregon. None of our friends were equipped to offer shelter to myself and my son. So we were kind of in limbo. Home became consistently turbulent and our lives began to revolve around whom could hurt whom the worst. It was a raging conflict all the time at our house.

We may have been forced to cohabitate, but I was adamant that I was done with him. First order of business: I moved in two semi homeless 19 year old drifter dudes from the neighborhood who had lost their place and needed somewhere to crash. I admit it. It was a total petty ass move on my part. One of them, Seth, was the just about the cutest fucking thing I had ever seen. He played the guitar, and sang, which really ground JP’s gears. That worked for me! Oh, and he also thought it was absolutely hilarious to openly flirt with me in front of my philandering husband. My nickname for him was “boy band”. Would you be surprised to find out this did not lower the tension?

Shit got crazier and crazier, as it always tends to do in fraught situations such as this. I legitimately could not stand to look at JP after about six months worth of the Lie, Cheat, Repeat game that he played so damn well. Not only that, but he completely underestimated my intelligence, so eventually, I had his shit gamed out before even he did. Once I caught on to his patterns, he was burnt. If I was really smart, though, Iwould have simply exited stage left but my wounded pride did not allow me to see that as a viable option at the time. I didn't have a whole lot of options when it came to safe places to go, that much was definitely true. But there was a stupider and darker reason I didn't leave as well. You see, I got caught up in one of the oldest damned traps in the universe. I wanted to get revenge for how he made me feel. I wanted to make him hurt as much as I was hurt. I wanted to win a game that never has a real winner at the finishing line no matter how hard you play it.

PSA time!

Readers, please hear me now. If you ever find yourself in a situation like this: RUN. I Don't care how much time or effort you've already invested in the relationship. The sunken cost fallacy works for relationships the same as it works for anything else. It doesn't matter whether you have kids together (actually having kids together makes it MORE imperative that you bounce)! It especially doesn't matter if you're sticking around only because you want to wound the other person in a manner that is proportionate to your own suffering. That is a fool's errand. Once animosity reaches a certain tipping point, there's no way to ‘win’ anything. There are only first and second place losers. Trust me, leaving is better than the alternative. It preserves your dignity a hell of a lot better, you will be much, much less likely to find yourself…oh, say, taking a rake to the windshield of your husband's car or putting a fist to your husband's big screen TV (Hey, I'm here to tell you that can be a concern). Or even buying a stalker style SD card that lets you peep on your husband's cell phone (Allegedly). Also, you might just avoid ruining your health in the process. Thus ends my PSA.

So, eventually, I started avoiding home whenever he was there. I provided childcare and domesticity all day, fed my son dinner, and then I would leave the house as soon as JP got home. Our neighborhood was a strange one anyway. Right off of Duval Blvd in Northwest Austin, there exists a two block by three block intersecting chunk of property, abutting the train tracks. Alpheus Avenue/Acropolis Court. The train went by so often that we didn't even register it after a while. It was filled with nothing but run down fourplex units, fronted by drab gravel parking lots with brown grass strips between the units. The neighborhoods surrounding it had all been gentrified so thoroughly that the dividing split between rich and poor was more starkly defined than I had ever personally witnessed before. Our little pseudo ghetto was populated by whatever flavor of weirdo, freak, hippie, poor college kid, single mom and/or narcotic user you could ever fancy. And I, being the gregarious and friendly person that I am, had befriended the majority of them. I didn't even have to leave the neighborhood in order to have somewhere away from JP to hang out, which was quite handy. I dove back into old familiar habits of an addict, seeking succor in various substances and finding ways to numb the deep dark pain I was carrying with me all the time.

JP, meanwhile, continued to do insane and off-putting shit that did nothing to endear himself to me. Quite the opposite, in fact. He once staged a weird ass fake suicide thing, smashing our bedroom mirror and threatening from behind the locked bedroom door to slash his own wrists with it - because I had told him I was leaving. It was pathetic. I mean that, truly. It was just so damn gross. Ugh. I can't even. It was quite clearly an attempt to manipulate me in order to keep there and, oh my friends and readers, it only served to enraged me further. My first husband would beat me up and then threaten to kill himself afterwards, and that sympathy card had been fully punched by the time JP pulled that shit. When Rick and I came home from running errands and discovered him, I left the house with Rick, walked across the street and called 911 to report it from my friend’s house. I knew it was total bullshit, but my friend across the street convinced me that I should be safe rather than sorry, so I called. I should have listened to my damn gut. The cuts were clearly shallow and the whole attempt was transparently fake. Then afterwards, the authorities turned MY name into CPS because they said I had allowed my child to witness domestic violence. It was not domestic violence, that was bullshit. But on Valentine's Day that year, 2010, domestic violence ended up being exactly what it was when he punched me right in my face during an argument in the parking lot of our apartment. Happy VD everybody!

I made the fateful choice to call the police that day, because after ending my 12 year relationship with my first husband, Ron, who beat the crap out of me for at least 11 of those years, I had vowed that I would never again allow any man to hurt me without consequences. I had never called the police on Ron. I had been too embarrassed and ashamed, too afraid of the judgement of my neighbors and family. Thusly, he never faced any consequences for any of the considerable abuse he heaped upon me during our time together. When I finally did leave him, some members of my own damn family questioned the veracity of his abuse because I had never had him arrested. (Looking at you Richard). So when JP punched me, I wasn’t fucking around. I called them immediately.

I can tell you one thing for certain: I will never again call the police for protection when someone hurts me no matter how bad off I am. I learned that lesson well. Once again, because my son had been present, (even though he was in the car in his car seat and didn't see a damn thing), they turned both of us into CPS. Because I had the audacity to put my face in front of his fist, I guess.

This time, it being the second call, they sent a worker around to inspect the home and interview me They showed up while JP was at work, and they basically informed me that because my son had witnessed domestic violence twice in a short period of time, JP would have to find elsewhere to live until they could figure out a parenting plan. It would either be that, she said, or we could find a family member (in the Austin proper area only) who could take Rick in until we figured it out. If we had no family in the Austin proper area and JP refused to leave? He would go into foster care then. I felt swoony and sick, like I might heave my entire guts out right there at my table when she hit me with that shit. Clearly, there was no choice. JP would have to find somewhere to go. Slight problem, that, since JP was the only person with any income. He flatly refused to ask his work friends if he could stay with them. He didn't have any friends besides work friends and casual fucks, it seems, and apparently his casual fucks didn't like him enough for that either.

Our finances were already shaky as fuck, we were late on the rent by a month. Chaos breeds chaos breeds chaos breeds more fucking chaos. So JP took his check and got himself a room at the local extended stay, and simply didn't bother to pay the rent at our apartment or even call the landlord. He said that it was my problem to fix. He was so damn pissed that I would make him leave his own house. It didn't even matter to him that CPS was telling us that the only other option would be for us to send our son into foster care!

When I received the eviction notice from the landlord, I freaked out. I knew that JP would have enough to cover it, but only if he didn't have to pay for the hotel room. He kept texting me and calling me; guilting me about letting him come home, my anxiety was at levels I had no prior experience dealing with. Everything was looming, looming: impossible choices as far as the eye can see. And like so many times before, I made the exact fucking wrong one. I caved. I was so panicked about possibly being homeless with my toddler that I gave in and I told him I would let him come back. I told myself that sometimes in life, to cure the sickness, you have to choke down some awful medicine. So that's what I did.

The CPS worker showed up unexpectedly the very next day, catching JP sitting outside smoking a cigarette on the front porch. She chastised us both, told us that she would be filing a report about this and that we should expect to hear back from someone about the next steps soon. The next steps. Those were ominous fucking words, but I had no idea how ominous just yet.

Goddammit was I ever angry. Fury personified. In my impotent rage, I lashed out at JP and told him that he might as well take off and go back to the hotel because I blamed him for every single bit of this fuck-tussle of a situation. He obliged.

April 25 is my birthday, and in the cruelest of coincidences, it was also the day they came to take my baby boy away from me. I really can't talk too much about that day. I don't think I've ever been in a more primal, existentially terrified state at any other time in my entire life. I had been expecting many things from them. Counseling maybe. Reiterations about the necessity of JP moving out, perhaps. Since I had made him leave again and he had a room at the hotel, I thought I might be ok. What I truly did not expect was for them to show up and tell me that they were going to take my child away. Temporarily. As if that small detail was enough to quell the abject terror rising in my breast. As if that weren't a nightmare enough, the same rules applied as she told me before. If we had no suitable friends or family members in the Austin City limits, he would go to foster care. Now I don't know about you, but just the words “foster care” scare me to death in relation to my child. You just don't hear that many truly awesome foster care stories. You do, however, hear a whole lot of gruesomely awful stories. I was scared out of my mind just thinking about it.

In the end, I pulled off some last minute seat of my pants begging and pleading with our neighbor, Sue, who had known us as long as we had lived there, which was Rick's entire life at the time. She agreed to take temporary care of him until we got it all squared away. I remember after getting that handled, I felt like I had been completely wrung dry. I was flat, hollow, completely drained, hopeless. Yes, I had saved Rick from going with strangers, but my life was still in shambles. My marriage was a farce, our bills were all overdue, my son had been taken from me unexpectedly, when we had literally NEVER been apart in his whole damn life. Every single second was a new unfolding horror show. Rick and I were tight. Compadres. The dream team. We called ourselves MomAndTheBomb.com. I was gutted. We he scared? I had no way of knowing. I couldn't even talk to him on the phone. Against the rules. I would have to wait for two entire damn weeks for a family court judge to set up my visitation schedule. Before that could happen, I would have to submit a urine sample for a drug test and get a psychological profile completed. This was when the absolute enormity of this shit storm fully hit me. Two weeks? Without my son? A visitation schedule? And supervised? Like I was going to hurt or touch my baby boy in some sick way? Surely this was all just a nightmare and I would heave myself awake bathed in cold sweat and terror soon, and then I would breathe a sigh of relief upon finding all was right in the world. But no such awakening awaited me that day. You would not be wrong to presume that I was completely out of my gourd with anguish.

When you're in the kind of mentally unstable condition that I found myself in during those hellscape days, you don't tend to make the best of decisions. Also, in fraught domestic situations, there usually exists on the periphery, the human equivalent of carrion animals. By this, I mean to say that there is a certain type of person who just always seems to show up on the scene when disaster seems imminent. Their only function in life seems to be spotting dysfunction and trying to gleefully move it along for their own personal benefit. They will gladly walk right up to the edge with you and then stand back and watch you amble off the edge of the cliff happily. It's not animosity, but naked self concern that fuels these types. They are there for the party until the party ends and then they are dust in the wind. These people suddenly surrounded me at all times. There was a whole house of dudes across the street who were all too happy to be the privatized disaster capitalists of my marriage. I had a whole house full of stuff that I had nowhere to store and no way to take with me, so I started trading what I could to the lingering, circling vultures, and giving away what couldn't be traded to worthy neighborhood residents. I was so numb and empty. I sat in my house, surrounded by boxes I was trying to pack, and I got high with the guys from across the street for days. I did anything they put in front of me. I. Did. Not. Give. Any. Fucks. I got high like I was angry at the drugs and I wanted to combust, achieving mutually assured destruction. I wanted to breathe fire and smoke and ravage everything in my path, myself included. Myself especially, truth be told. My son had long been my only solid reason for getting up in the mornings. Now that had been ripped away so suddenly, so violently, I could hardly even process that loss. I wanted to make damn sure that I kept myself as numb as possible.

Since the rent never did get paid, the eviction rolled along unimpeded. I suppose I could have tried to fight it somehow, but I had no money and almost no will to live left at that point. It is fair to say that I stood right on the edge of the abyss, teetering on tented feet, daring any small wayward gust of circumstance to knock me over the edge and down into the impenetrable blackness irretrievably. The silent moments in the still of the night, after all of my friends were passed out or gone, when there were no substances left to blunt me anymore, and every small sound echoed hollowly off the cold empty walls; those hours were the worst. The longest and loneliest hours.

My eviction date coincided nearly perfectly with my family court date. Just a few days later. Family court was terrifying in it's blandness. I was so scared and on edge and nervous. I don't know exactly what I expected, but it was quite plain and utilitarian. Almost obscenely so, given the high personal stakes involved. The judge informed both of us that we would have to get counseling, a complete psych workup, and complete parenting courses as well as successfully passing our randomized UA’s. Then the gut wrenching bit. Supervised visitation. One hour (ONE FUCKING HOUR) a week! It was to be at the CPS office on Wells Branch in Austin Texas. A few days later, after returning the keys to the landlord, I was officially homeless and broke as well.

Here is another area of the story I'm going to breeze through rather quickly, only because the are a few spots in this story that still cut fairly deep. I suspect that might never change. Maybe though. I've already beaten my own estimation of myself dozens of times. I'm always surprised too.

The first day of homelessness, I managed to contact my friend Andy, who was all too happy to let me come stay for at least a few months. I was so fucking relieved! Andy was a great dude, he had a nice clean place, a pool even. It was somewhere at least to land and begin figuring some things out The first day there, however, while Andy was at work, his greaseball cousin Tony, who had been drinking heavily, tried to sexually assault me pinning me forcibly against the wall, while trying to penetrate my lips with his big leathery beer smelling tongue. I finally freed my mouth and screamed for help and he let me go. Holy fucking shit.

I had some of JP’s collectible knives that I had thrown into a backpack thinking I could sell them for a few bucks maybe. I listed them on Craigslist and shortly thereafter I was emailed by a man named Kenneth who was interested. He drove to pick them up, and we stuck up a conversation. I mentioned some of my troubles, and before I even knew what I was doing, the whole sick situation with Tony the scumbag would be rapist was tumbling out of my mouth. Normally, spilling shit like this to a complete stranger is not my scene, but oh my readers, I was desperately needing a friendly human connection. In that lonely and desperate moment, Kenneth seemed like he was just that. What do you know? He said. He had an eBay business and could use someone who could write ads for his listings. He was impressed with how I'd listed the knives, he said. Also, would I have a problem cooking a meal or two a day for his elderly father? Holy crap! This had to be a miracle!

As I write this, I am shaking my head in disbelief that this all really did go down like this. It's hard to countenance sometimes, but it is all true. I've carried these stories around so long, but writing it down makes it somehow more real. I guess. It hits way different seeing it all put down in chronological order.

Anyway, I know you will all be for SHOCKED when I tell you that Kenneth was not the knight in shining armor he purported himself to be. He wasn't even a fool wrapped in tin foil. He was simply yet another garden variety fucking predator who saw me as a mark. Always fear men who are too eager to offer their help. I have had to learn that. His predatory nature became clear when he immediately started to pressure me to sleep with him. Like the first day I was there. I demurred. That wasn't in the job description, sorry dude. He still persisted. I resisted his advances uncomfortably. Then he started nagging me to watch fucking Joel Osteen on Sunday mornings. He had such a boner for ol Joel. He was super pissed when I laughed right in his stupid face. Fuuuuuuuck no, thank you very much.

It was incredibly difficult to live with him, but I had absolutely no choice. As long as I stayed there with him, I not only had employment (a significant factor with family court judges) but I had a place to stay, and most importantly,I had a ride out to the CPS facility where they held the parents education classes that I was mandated to take. That facility was as far South as you could get and still be in Austin. Way out at the edge of the city, next to the state prison. Past the areas that the Austin Metro buses even ran to. If I moved out of his house, I would literally have no way there and I would potentially lose my son for even longer, or worse, permanently. There was a lot I would have put up with. Kenneth knew it too.

By now, you have a pretty good read on the state of my psyche and the fragility of my emotions in general. I was making it to the classes at least. But those classes pissed me off so fucking much. First of all, they would make you say your name like it was an AA meeting. “Hi my name is______and I'm an addict.” I instinctively bridle at things like this. First, losing my autonomy and being forced to recite shit I didn't mean and that I didn't think was true cuts against my grain. I did it, but grudgingly. I was seething with anger at the perceived injustice of the whole thing. Just because I had weed in my system from that first UA, they had stuck me here with people who hid dope in their kid’s strollers, or worse, in their kid's diapers. All of my partying and drug use took place away from my child while my son was in the care of his father. In my estimation, this was a terrible miscarriage of justice! I didn't belong here, my mind cried out furiously. I wasn't the mom who tripped on PCP while her infant was under her care. I wasn't the mother who nodded out with a needle in her arm and a baby in the car seat.

I was so mad that someone had usurped my free will and was forcing me to say untrue or inauthentic feeling things with my own mouth, whilst they were dangling my child as the carrot. It got me fired up, white hot and blazing. What I wouldn't admit to myself at the time, because I wasn't quite there yet, was that even though I may not have been guilty of mistreating my child by using drugs around him or dealing diaper dope at the corner store, I had still by my actions led myself here. I was culpable in this bullshit, simply because I had allowed my lesser demons out to play. It may not have been drugs I was addicted to, but I certainly had developed an addiction to anger and pettiness. Venom. Chaos. Revenge. That pride shit burns, doesn't it? Like I said, I wasn't there quite yet. At this juncture in my tale, I was still stuck in that resentful seething tooth grinding victim mindset. Don't worry. I got better.

So this was my frame of mind, my whole state of being, upon entering into the drab, beige and oatmeal colored temple of bureaucratic redundancy in which the parenting classes were being conducted. It was the third class, so I already knew the routine. Introduction, go round the table, say the fucking words, blah blah blah. Let's do this shit.

After we handled the introduction, the counselor who led the group stood up to give a presentation. Something a little different, she said. Today, we would be learning about a famous poet and one poem that he wrote in particular. Friends, my need to be angry was instantly warring with sincere piqued curiosity at this unexpected development. Still, I was sure it would probably be just some more ol bullshit. Interested, yet skeptical, I leaned back in my chair to better listen to the story of William Ernest Hensley, which I will now relate to you, albeit in a quite shortened and condensed version.

Hensley was born in 1849 in Gloucester England. At age 12 he came down with TB. Tuberculosis. But not the TB that people usually mean when they talk about it, with the lungs and the blood and Doc Holliday and all of that. This was TB of the bones, which causes huge ulcerous infections to form over and over and over again in one's joints. Ulcers that must then be painfully drained off repeatedly. A sufferer could have it for a few years, and go into remission, or they could have it for life and die with it. Hensley, himself lost his left leg below the knee, and was forced to leave his family and live in a sanitarium (at 12!) where his days were comprised of agonizing therapy and illness. He was there for YEARS. Eventually his disease went into remission, and he struck out on his own into the world to try his hand at University.

Along the way, Hensley befriended a guy some of you might have heard of. Robert Louis Stevenson? Ring any bells? Yeah that guy. So impressed was Stevenson with Henley that he would later craft the character of Long John Silver (you know him from a little tome called Treasure Island) directly from details culled from his real life friend, Hensley. So yeah that's pretty freaking cool, right?

J.M. Barrie was another close friend. That, if you are unaware, is the author of Peter Pan. Not only that, however, but the character of Wendy in Peter Pan was directly modeled after Hensley's young daughter, Margaret, who tragically died at five years old of cerebral meningitis, adding yet another amongst countless tragedies to befall him in his life.

Then, his TB started acting up again, in the other leg this time. Back to the sanitarium it was, where he was informed that there was nothing they could do but to remove that leg as well. Hensley thought about that for half a second and then gave that idea the old HELL NO treatment and he buggered off to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where he sought out the help of a guy whom you also might know a bit about: Joseph Lister (think Listerine).

Lister was a pioneer in bacteriology and wound care. He was the first to recognize that it was germs that caused putrefaction in wounds. Hensley, it seems, had bet on the right horse, and together, they managed to save his other leg when all other doctors said it couldn't be done.

Look, I could probably write a whole book about this dude. He was fascinating, and holy crap, look at how this one guy was connected to all of these other giant, culturally significant people in the world at that moment in time! This man truly lived with his finger on the pulse of what was new and exciting. Like some one legged 19th century Forrest Gump. He adventured. He explored. He learned. He pioneered. He suffered, yes, that was inarguable. But he also thrived.

By this point in the presentation, I was spellbound. Forgotten, was my seething anger and my resentment. I had come in there that day with it in my mind to simply get through this crap as quickly as possible. I had put up my shields because I was so prideful and so incredibly angry about so many legitimate things that were out of my control, but I had nowhere helpful or productive to put any of that. So, I made the process of the parenting classes the focus of my ire. Also, as I said before, loss of autonomy, big trigger. But this counselor had made me forget all of that for those few moments, so enraptured was I with the tale of Hensley and his crazy life. But wait! There's more! We haven't even gotten to the very best part.

This entire buildup that she presented to us that day, was but a pretext for her to hand out worksheets that were printed with a few lines of poetry. Read it, she said. I will tell you as close to exactly as I can remember of what she told us so that maybe you can feel the same impact. She told us:

“Read his words. Feel his words. Think of his struggles. The obstacles he faced in his life. The heartbreak and abject misery he existed within for so much of it. The heavy weight of his disappointments. The physical pain that plagued him ceaselessly for all of his life. Contrast all of that with the beautiful and awe inspiring words he wrote” : (the poem goes thusly)

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

•••••••••••••••••••••••

She read it out loud. Then she looked up at us and made eye contact and said.

“Each and every one of you came here in great pain. You are suffering greatly right now, there is no doubt. This is hard. It is hard because it is worth it. Your pain is real. Your pain has a purpose.”

She paused.

“Your pain will not end you,” she continued. “It may very well seem as though it will at times. Whenever you feel as though you cannot go another inch, you cannot walk another foot, you cannot make it to work on time, that it won't matter if you give up, I want you to think about the fact that William Ernest Hensley lived the tragic and pain filled life he was cursed with by chance, but he lived his life exuberantly and defiantly. He lived his life right up in life's ugly ass face. If someone can suffer such pain, overcome so many hardships, and still make it through with words like those within his soul, then there's no reason why any of you can't do the same thing.”

Mic drop.

Seemingly out of nowhere, she produced a tissue box and passed it through the class. Everyone took a few. I took a handful. I had not realized until that exact moment just how very close I had been to giving up completely. I mean it. I was so numb yet also full of a pain so raw that I barely even dared to acknowledge it for fear that it would envelope me completely. I had not come there that day to learn anything. I had not come there on that day to grow. I had definitely not come to break down and blubber like a baby in front of the hustlers of cranny crack and the heroin housewives. My friends, I did all of those things effortlessly and with great abandon.

Now, if this were a movie or a fictional book, this is where we would wrap it up with a gauzy finish. Real life is a little bit more like that gauzy finish, after it's been carefully applied over the top of road rash. Yeah, that sounds about right. It was, most assuredly, a turning point for me, as far as my attitude went. I approached the whole experience of the parenting classes with a much more open mind, and I learned something new when I had the opportunity to do so. And as trite as some may think it sounds, when I started to feel like I couldn't go on anymore, I would search up Invictus and read through it again, and ponder the badass one legged miracle man who wrote it. And it worked, pretty much every time. Floating in my sea of pain, and surrounded by the wreckage of my life that was left bobbing in those waters around me, Invictus became the sturdy platform that I wrapped my arms around and clung to fiercely whilst the storms raged.

And yes, obviously, in the end, I got Rick back. Remember when I said to cure the sickness sometimes you gotta choke down some bad medicine? Well, my dear readers; JP reached out to me through our old neighbor Sue, and he expressed an interest in rekindling our marriage. He had a place I could come and stay with him, he still had his car, we could work together to get Rick back, I wouldn't have to constantly dodge sleeping with Kenneth or be pressured to watch fucking Joel Osteen with that psycho. It was a decent pitch, altogether. Gulp, down went that medicine, folks.

We got Rick back, according to the family court judge, faster than anyone who had ever appeared before him in his court under similar circumstances. Cold comfort, somewhat, as my son was very psychologically affected by the whole ordeal. He wasn't the only one. I still couldn't stand JP, but I would have walked over hot coals with bare feet for an eternity just to have my baby boy back. I did what I had to do.

In the end, we landed in a much better place. We found a nice new apartment, ditched the unhealthy friends, kept to ourselves. Bonus: JP was working a LOT. So I didn't have to see him very much. Life, for a few blessedly beautiful years, was once again full of light and joy for me. Along the way, right before we got custody of Rick back, I found out I was pregnant with Alex. Still, my interesting times were not at an end quite yet. Life, being the beautiful schizo bitch that she is wasn't done with me by a long shot. Not too very long after Alex was born, we would take a fateful trip to *Six Flags San Antonio that would ultimately change our lives forever once again. But that, my friends, is a story for another time.

*This is covered in my story: “the unbelievable cross country epic of the free candy van”

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