Dude.
And so this hero’s sago continues. I’ve been hard pressed to add to the many stiflingly personal items in this arsenal of diatribes, mostly because I’ve been trying to keep things “cute and country” for the most part. I’ve been giving you the cliffs notes, yes. But, as I weed through some of this hot mess, my vibe has been elevated. I see way more genuine silver linings in this particular change cycle. And I’ve been able to flow with the go, if you will.
And finally, not but 48 hours ago, I’ve reached *gasp* my actual wit’s end. One of my friends asked me what it looks like? Like “wit’s end” is a place, and I’m the first in my circle to visit. Like this place is a weird cul de sac populated by a wide array of seedy characters that frazzle one’s nerves in such a dire way, brain cells hang on for dear life and the people who visit, even for a short time, leave with glassy eyes and wayward hair wishing they never left the comfort of their couch. It turns out, “wit’s end” is an actual place. And my visit was totally unexpected. So much so I ended up there utterly unprepared. AND I do have glassy eyes and wayward hair– not the good kind we oft ogle over in fashion rags, btw.
So. The artist formerly known as The BD, who in posts past reclaimed his former name by way of some completely asinine behavior, and then went back to not being deemed The BD (keep up if you can) has again found himself back to the status of now infamously The BD. And he’s adding to his brood. Twins. That’s right, I found out two days ago that the woman he may be living with (who isn’t the same woman he was engaged to mere months ago–you know the one he crashed Aubrei’s birthday party with–yeah, that one.) Well, apparently, this new woman–who isn’t so new because he introduced Aubrei to her almost a year ago while he was still engaged to the other one. Um… right. Well, he and this new woman are having twins. boys. Aubrei is getting the siblings she has been bugging me about for years. Hoo-rah. No. That is not “detest” that you may be sensing right now. Well, okay. There is some detest in my “hoo-rah”. But not in the way you may be thinking. What you are actually detecting is 48 hours of me holding a virtual mop and broom trying to clean up a really, really big mess The BD has left for me on the path to my utterly unnecessary journey to “wit’s end”. Read on.
We’ll start at the end so all of this will make more sense. I’m in the car with Aubrei driving home and she says: “Daddy was with “Becky” and now he’s with “Buffy”. Once daddy leaves “Buffy”, he’ll be with you Mommy.”
Me: *choke* “Honey, (pause) why would you say that?”
Aubrei: “Because Daddy gets all the girls.”
Me: *choke, cough, gag* “Is that what you think men are supposed to do, baby? Get all the girls?”
Aubrei: “Yes.”
So. My brilliant and precocious 5 year old already understands the concept of player and womanizer without even knowing what those words mean. OF COURSE, I brought this up to her father. OF COURSE, I’m gently trying to explain to him that apparently what he’s been exposing Aubrei to, is giving her some inappropriate ideas that go exactly against how I’m raising her. His response? “I have no idea where she would get that from.”
O.M.F.G.
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs “FROM WATCHING YOU FUCK NUT!!!” But I didn’t. I refrained. It wasn’t worth the 5 weeks of added drama and never really having an opportunity to at least discuss this madness like grown ups first. So, for an hour, we did just that. We discussed how kids learn by example. He assured me that he is the pillar of good examples for Aubrei. That he refuses to expose her to anything even remotely seedy. How unfortunate it is that she sees his being in committed relationships that simply didn’t work out as his being a player, but, he assures me again. If there were an actual “how to be a good father” manual, he not only would have written said book, but also, his picture would be on the cover and alongside many of the references therein. He continued about how he sticks with the script that I’ve lain out for him and he does not pass go, he does not collect $200, he simply works within the parameters of said script.
Of course, I know that most of what comes out of his mouth at any given point is bullshit. But, I had hope that at least he actually believed the drivel that was literally falling from his lips like newly erupted lava and was probably melting his phone as he spoke them. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t even giggle. I just listened and tried not to gag. Particularly on the part when I asked if he was living with “Buffy”. I asked this because Aubrei has told me many times that she doesn’t like her. And she told me that she and her daddy stayed at Buffy’s house this past weekend. She said and I quote. “First Daddy was living with ‘Becky’, then he was staying with mom mom and now he’s living with ‘Buffy'”. I was concerned that he was forcing his weird personal life on Aubrei. I practically pleaded with him, as per our agreement when we first decided to part ways, NOT to invite Aubrei into his messy personal affairs. We both agreed that Aubrei should not be exposed to a revolving door of people who were doomed to not work out with either of us. I have kept to this agreement, but he has done exactly what he wanted. He assured me that none of this was the case.
Sidebar: I’ve only seen pictures of “Buffy” and if I describe her to you, you probably would think I was embellishing. I wouldn’t be, of course. However, since I’ve changed her name (barely) to protect her *cough* identity, I might as well keep with the well meaning theme and skip describing her. Mostly so you can use your imagination and giggle to yourself repeatedly about your fantastical creation–not mine.
He went on to tell me me that Buffy does NOT live with him YET. Aubrei made up that little bit about Buffy making her breakfast of Cheerios and milk this past weekend. Oh, by the way, he moved to New Jersey. Oh, by the way, he took a new job that requires him to travel a lot. Oh, by the way, Buffy never spends the night at his house when Aubrei is there. And if she is there, he shows no emotion or affection toward this Buffy person. He’s only introduced Buffy to Aubrei as “his friend”. He made special emphasis to me that he HAS NOT introduced Aubrei to this woman as his girlfriend, fiance OR wife. Aubrei knows Buffy ONLY as his friend and she’s only seen her at cookouts and such. *sigh* This was paramount information for me to know for some reason. I just listened, making mental notes of all the inconsistencies, gag pending. Mind you, I had no idea about what was coming and that what was coming would effectively negate everything he said in the previous hour. I added, “I can’t wait until you finally find yourself a truly dope woman to spend your life with because these last two–” He cut me off. “Well, I think I found h…”( he trailed off).
Finally, the conversation was coming to a close and he says, “I really want to talk to you in person. There are a lot of changes going on and you know, the thing I miss most about you is that we were friends and I miss talking to you about stuff. But anyway, there’s stuff going on. I mean, it doesn’t really affect you, but it affects me and Aubrei and my new family.” *insert record skid here*
At first I wasn’t going to ask. I found myself with that blank blink that happens when somebody is walking a good distance in front of you with one of those cast iron frying pans and then you get hit in the face with it and you’re trying to figure out how in the *bleep* you got hit when you were clearly 10 paces out of range.
The blank blink went on for several moments until my mouth just went on with it. “New family?”
He paused briefly, not really strained. He said these next words pleasant like. “Yeah, we’re expecting twin boys.” Actually, I can’t remember if he said “I’m expecting” or “We’re expecting”, so I’m using “we’re” because it sounds better. I guess.
I tell him congratulations (genuinely) and ask when the babies are due. He says Christmas. I’m not really thinking about the math, but the facts are there, sitting on my forehead like a lump often does when one has just been hit in the head with a cast iron frying pan. He then goes on to say that he tried to ease Aubrei in to everything by showing her the ultrasound… *insert screech, halt, needle on record player flies off handle into the air, hits wall and slides down to floor leaving horrendous scratches as it goes*
Now I’m just plain old mad. Did he just tell me he told our daughter he was having kids with his “friend” without even consulting me about it first? Did he just hand my daughter a hand grenade and send her off for the weekend?
I don’t remember how we got off the phone, I just know that within seconds I was on the phone with my dad. I told him the entire sordid ordeal and he said. ” I know.”
“Well, how do YOU know?” I ask.
“Aubrei told us” He says.
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t for me to tell. Plus, we weren’t sure if it was true. Aubrei said her dad took her to the hospital to see the ultrasound and when you dropped her off here, she basically unloaded everything.”
My head is now throbbing because I’m thinking of things that have happened with Aubrei over the last several months. Her inexplicable behavior. Her whining, crying on a dime. Wetting the bed. Her acting like a baby and wanting to be carried everywhere. Even though she’s about a foot shorter than me. She’s 5. I’m 5’5″. I thought she was acting this way because she was nervous about her journey to Kindergarten. I was thinking maybe she was just going through a phase.
I immediately text The BD. “We need to talk some more. I have more questions. How long has Aubrei known? Did you take her to the hospital for the ultrasound?!” He text me back: “Okay, we can talk later. It’s late. And no, I just showed her the picture.”
If I had eaten anything, it would have been all over my shoes. How could this man, who just gave me the “father of the year poster child” speech have been so careless as to introduce life altering information to a five year old without even the slightest consideration of how it would affect her, nor any recourse through me to help her process her feelings? I have no idea how long Aubrei has known she was going to have two brothers by way of daddy’s “friend”, but I can only assume she found out when her erratic behavior started (months ago). She knew and was too afraid to tell me what she knew because her father gave her the impression it was a secret to be kept from me. So, for however long, Aubrei has been carrying around this hand grenade her father thought was a good idea for a 5 year old to play with. Unconscionable.
My male friends who are or were married and have multiple kids asked me for The BD’s address so they could drive to his house and smack the shit out of him. These were their responses in no particular order.
S: “You never, ever discuss life altering information with a child without consulting with her mother first. NEVER. Does he know what that could do to her? Dropping bombs on her like that?!”
J: “So…you say he introduced this Buffy person to Aubrei as only his friend? And then he told Aubrei he was having kids with her? So now Aubrei thinks that Daddies are supposed to have babies with their friends? What a fucking moron.”
R: “The chic is 5 months prego!!! Was he even going to tell you at all? Or was he going to wait until the babies got here and then tell you?”
S: “What kind of person is this guy? Doesn’t he know that kids get traumatized by less life altering things? And the father of the year award goes to…not him.”
E: “This guy is selfish and clueless. But you knew this already. Didn’t you?”
Even my male friends who are unmarried and without kids when told this scenario were asking me for The BD’s address so they could drive to his house and smack the shit out of him. Too bad I don’t know his new address. Personally, I’m a non-violent soul. The very least I could do is rent the truck and drive them all there.
So. The big picture of all of this finally began to take shape and come into focus for me.
I thought about the many opportunities within the last 5-6 months he could have told me, PRIOR, to telling our five year old. I thought about all the ways I could have been better prepared and better understood what Aubrei was going through over the last several months she’d been showing her regressive behavior. I cried because in this very selfish and oblivious act, The BD denied our child any sanctuary in one of the most crucial adjustments in her 5 year old life. He made a horrible parenting choice. He lied to me continuously. He encouraged Aubrei to keep secrets from me. He didn’t bother to care enough to at least research how to handle adjusting an older sibling to the arrival of new siblings– and if that’s not enough–he found the one person in the known world that my daughter actually DOES NOT like to make a permanent fixture in her life. I. could. die.
If you would have told me 7 years ago, when I first met Aubrei’s dad, that I would be subjecting myself to this continuous slew of retardation on his part, I would have cooed at you like a giggling school girl backstage at a Menudo concert. There is no way for me to have known my life would get this weird and so so so so so far removed from the bucolic suburban two parent household I grew up in. You know the one–where kids grow up in a jazzy home, complete with an in ground pool, a cool car to drive on their 17th birthday and two doting, (albeit crazy as all hell over protective) parents.You know that one? Yeah, well. I had no idea how far removed from that I had come. Until 48 hours ago.
I had no idea how literally clueless some people are about value systems and setting positive, powerful examples for their kids. I thought this kind of stuff came semi standard in people. Particularly the person I chose to procreate with. I had no idea this man–even though our relationship sputtered, crashed and burned, could be the human equivalent of “can’t get right”. I had no idea he would subject the only child we’ve had between the two of us for 5 years– to trauma–knowingly or unknowingly. I thought–I hoped–that the only person he could be a bit selfless for would be his daughter. At least, I had hoped that he wouldn’t have been so compelled as to keep this big of a secret for so long and then literally and knowingly let a bomb drop first on his only daughter, give her no resource to help her process everything, and then later drop another bomb on me because he was too much of a coward to do the right thing from the very beginning. There’s a lot of subtext in that last statement. Weed through it you’d like. I’m on a roll here.
Meanwhile, *insert martyr music here* I’m the one with the mop and the broom trying figure out exactly where and what the mess actually is, how best to clean it up and how to find my way out of this hell hole called “wit’s end” so there can be a silver lining around this shitty dust cloud.
To The BD’s defense (even though there really isn’t a good one) blended families are complicated entities in and of themselves. We don’t live in the age of The Huxtables or Ozzie and Harriet. We live in an age where families make choices that make sense for them. To me, that’s great. It’s real. Not all children will grown up in a “standard all American” two parents of the same mind frame household. No two families should look the same. I’m sure, because he and I really aren’t that close and it really is his family and not mine and Aubrei is his daughter too, he didn’t see anything wrong with telling her. It doesn’t really affect me was his rational. Aubrei needs to know, I’m on a need to know basis. I’m thinking he didn’t consider that Aubrei LIVES with me and visits with him. I’m sure what happens with Aubrei after she leaves him on Sunday nights didn’t even dawn on him. I’m positive, based entirely on all the circumstances that I’m not fully aware of, he made the best choice he knew how to make. Which is really kind of scary if you think about it.
And yet, there is a posture of added care we can take for the sake of our children when handling sensitive scenarios such as these. We’re not reinventing the wheel here folks, we’re simply putting our kids first. We’re giving them tools they can use in their own lives to cope with change. Change hurts even grown ups. Lets be mindful of how much more it can hurt the young people we’re guiding toward adulthood. The key to all of this is conscious communication. Had The BD simply had an honest conversation with me prior to the frivolous bomb dropping. Had he looked at me as a partner in raising our kid, I could have stepped up and prepared Aubrei for what was coming. I could have done the research I’m doing now months ago and recognized the signs of what she was going through and helped her through it. I wouldn’t have been in the dark and concluding about her behavior utterly incorrectly.
That’s where my anger at him comes from. He didn’t even give me a chance to help our daughter cope with this. He treated me like an outsider in my own child’s life and thus effectively further damaged an already hanging by the thread relationship with him and caused unnecessary trauma for Aubrei. Not only is that not fair– it’s ugly, selfish parenting and I’m hard pressed to trust him or Aubrei with him from this point forward. How can I? He lied, withheld important information and acted completely irresponsibly. I’m gagging now at the thought. Now Aubrei has the siblings coming that she’s always wanted, and it’s already starting out weird, irreparably stained by his bullshit and wrong. And it could have been handled differently. So simply, with an awkward conversation months ago. At minimum, before he told her. I pray no one reading this will make the same mistake Aubrei’s dad did. I really, really do.
In case any of you out there are going through a similar situation and you’d like to avoid anything that even remotely resembles the mess I’m currently wading through OR you’re simply adding to your own family and have no idea how to humanely help your older kids adjust to an addition to your family, I’ve added some links at the bottom of this page that you may find helpful. The U of Michigan link has a slew of book references you can turn to should you need more than an article paraphrase on the topic. Feel free to pass the info along to The BD if you know him. We’re kind of not really in a good place right now.
I have no idea how all of this will play out. This is clearly not among my most promising life skill acquisitions. The good news, I suppose, is that as Dr. Beckwith says, “things don’t just happen, they happen just.” If I’ve learned anything in the last several years of riding with change, this little ditty serves a greater purpose than what’s in my current purview. I guess now, it’s just a matter of figuring out what exactly that is.
The moral of this story? You should know by now that I don’t know. Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. Peace and abundant “consciously communicate please!!!” blessings. Love, -e-
Links:
University of Michigan Health System/New Baby
Healthychildren.org/Preparing Your Family for a New Baby
http://kidshealth.org/second child