I’ve occasionally (albeit a long time ago) told tiny snippets of my brief marriage to a flaming malignant narcissist. VERY recently, my son graduated from high school, freeing me from the chains that bound me to his father for the better part of two decades.
I’m not going to bore you with the WHOLE sordid divorce tale. It’s just not worth telling anymore.
But here’s the thing.
When I filed for divorce shortly after 9/11, my narc (as we refer to him in the world of those struggling to recover from the verbal, emotional and/or physical violence they inflict) promised me I’d never seen my son again. N was two at the time, just really starting to talk and become a communicative little person. True to his word, the narc, funded by his wealthy family, fought me for custody tooth and nail for nearly a year. And, as is the case over 75% of the time when abusive fathers challenge for custody, I lost. Again, it’s a long story. I didn’t do anything wrong other than leave him...but I still lost. Money wins, you know.
The narc filed a protection order against me. I was homeless for six weeks and didn’t see my son for three of those six weeks. When I did, finally, it was while I was couch surfing at a friend’s house.
My son barely knew me anymore. He didn’t come to me with hugs and tears. He fled from me, shrieking and screaming, terrified of me and seemingly everything around him. At one point, thinking to get him outdoors and in a quiet place, I took him to a park. He ran away from me and refused to get back in the car. It literally took hours to calm him enough to get him in his car seat and back to the house.
I damned near died. I lost twenty pounds in two weeks. I didn’t sleep for days on end, and I could barely think. I blamed myself. I screamed at the world and hated everyone for failing to see how lost and alone I was. I buried it all when I did get to see him on occasion, being the very best mother I could be in the hope that love and gentleness would heal my son’s wounds. It was like a dark hold had opened in my heart. I ignored it as best as I could and went on, but every time he left me I fell into that hole for days, and only through sheer force of will did I get out and keep moving.
Eventually, after he looted the house and left, I was able to return to the family home. My daycare provider, who also lived next door, told me that my son screamed for me constantly. He cried all the time for weeks on end, only stopping when he collapsed into sleep. She said he often had nightmares and wouldn’t eat. She said she’d never seen anything like it and it broke her heart.
Just a year after the divorce was final, the narc relocated out of state, and the tenuous relationship I’d built with N became fragile once more as our visitation schedule shrank from nearly 50-50 shared time to four or five times a year. The best legal talent I could afford told me it was pointless to fight….the narc and money and family in his corner, and I was broke and supporting my developmentally disabled brother with no help from anyone.
Those were the most awful years of my life. The narc made it abundantly clear that he’d taken N to punish me for not staying in the marriage. I trembled constantly. I cried daily. I smoked too much. I hated and raged and wept. The guilt was enormous and self-inflicted. Just thinking about it makes it hard to breathe, hard to think.
And that’s just what it did to ME.
My beloved N fell behind in school almost from day one. He had raging temper tantrums and crying fits for many years. He had toileting accidents frequently well into elementary school and was held back in third grade. His educational performance never recovered, and he just barely...BARELY graduated from high school.
I got my son back….sort of. Cell phones and video calls saved N and I, along with gentle love, constant encouragement, and a rabid dedication to our relationship. In the years that followed, through an enormous amount of patience and hard work and all the love I have in me, my son and I ultimately became very, very close. Because of advances in my career, I now have the financial ability to pay to see my son almost at will, to take him on vacations and call him whenever I want. Twenty five hundred miles has been a lot to overcome, but we managed.
This horrific, barbaric “policy” is going to ruin young lives. These parents DON’T have the ability to call their kids, to lean on family, to seek legal guidance. Most don’t even speak English. They have NOTHING. This is inhumane, and it has the potential to cause suicides, addiction issues, criminal behavior, and all kinds of other bad things as a result of fear, anguish, guilt, anger, and despair. It’s going to create animosity and outright hatred of this nation.
Please….I beg of every Kossack who reads this. Please. Call your congress critters. Call your governors. Write letters to papers and magazines. Tweet. Protest. Donate.
Watching this happen has torn my heart open. Seeing and hearing these stories is almost more than I can bear. I can’t imagine how terrifying and heartbreaking it has to be for those who are going through it.
Please.
For all those beautiful babies and their mamas and papis.
Please.