If you missed Part I yesterday, you probably want to catch up or the rest of this may not make much sense :-)
My daughter was coming home every weekend to spend time with me and the kids after those first few months of staying with my mother-in-law. Side Note - What I still find so interesting about that is she would call me or call my ex to come and get her and give her a ride since I couldn't drive. She didn't seem to be too afraid of him then to ride 45 mins from his mother's house to ours, or to call him to drive her to and from football games at her school. Yet this was the entire basis for my parents case in why she couldn't be with me, because she was afraid of my ex...
Anyway I know she missed us horribly, and I assured her I was working on a plan so we would never have to see that ex of mine ever again. Even if I would have felt he had any redeeming qualities at this point my daughter still would have come first, just like she always had. We last spoke of my plan to get a small apartment near her new school so she wouldn't have to transfer over that last Thanksgiving day I saw her. She spoke of going to live with my parents since she felt that my ex's mom didn't want her there, and I assured her that would be the second worst decision she ever made. Little did I know that my daughter, my ex's mother, and my self serving parents already had a plan to put her on a plane the next day and send her from FL to MN.
I should have known something was wrong by the way she gave me and extra long hug before she left that day. I thought she was just being silly since I was going to see her in two days and she was going to spend the whole week with us during school break. You never know when you are holding someone you love in your arms that it will be for the last time, you just don't. She smiled right at me while lying to my face about coming back in two days. She lied to her little sister and told her they were going to spend the whole week playing dress up and Barbie's. Her little brother wasn't even a year old yet and has never known her at all.
My mother-in-law showed up two days later with my sister-in-law where they matter of fact told me how they had stuck her on a plane and sent her off, and tried to explain away to me that it was the best thing for "us all". Now at the time I was still a hopeful person so I cried and wailed an unimaginable amount knowing I would probably never see her again, but hopeful that I would since my parents had basically kidnapped her with my mother-in-laws help. I demanded my mother-in-law get my parents on the phone and tell them to put her on a plane back to FL immediately or I would call the police and report her kidnapped. I gave them two hours to get it done. My parents tried to offer me the $3000 I needed to fix my mercury poisoned teeth so I could live (money I had begged them to help me with before but they said only if I gave them my daughter so I told them to go to hell.) I again reiterated my sentiments about their money, and told them I was calling the police. I told my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to leave and never come back. I demanded my ex get in the car and drive up there to get her since this was all his doing by scaring the shit out of her, but he was a coward and refused to go for fear of being arrested.
What happened next in the story of my daughter being taken/ or leaving, however you want to view it, is another chapter in itself. Needless to say a very broken system that works against parents that truly love and care for their children won out, obviously since I haven’t seen her in years.
Most of the time when I write about the trauma I'm clearing it feels great and uplifting because I'm removing an obstacle in my emotional health field. I wrote this one more to try and deal with all the hate I have for my ex, which in its own way will clear some trauma.
I do not know exactly how to remove this hate. It effects me every day, even in the relationship I have with my other kids because there is a part of me so afraid to love them as I did her, because I could never handle losing another. I feel disconnected from them and I hate it. I know how to deal with the betrayal of someone you trusted - that I have plenty of experience with. I do not know how to live without my baby. It is going on 3 years now and every day is just as hard as the one before it when it comes to how much I miss her. There is a part of me that absolutely hates her for choosing those abusive addicts over me, and a part of me that is super pissed for her not trusting that I would NEVER let my ex hurt her in anyway shape or form. Mostly though I just miss her. Quite frankly if someone would have given me an option to just run away from that part of my life, I would have taken it too.
Update 12/26/2017- I originally wrote this post on October 31st, a bit less than a month before the anniversary of my oldest daughter being gone. There are a lot of reason I didn't post it till now. The main reason though is because as I said in the last paragraph, I had no idea how to work through this trauma. The whole reason I write posts is because I want to work through the dysfunctions that are affecting my life. It felt unfinished without that. Well needless to say my entire month of November was dysfunctional and useless because of this experience. It came up in my life and without a way to resolve it I allowed the dysfunction to steam roller over me. One dysfunction leads to another and before you know it you are up to your cheeks in a pile of shit again. I took some time to try and find a way to work this out, but I was so mentally stressed I just got physically sick and had to deal with that for a month.
Then along came December, which the 20th is my daughters birthday, she just turned 17. Per the norm my mother contacted me to dangle the carrot of seeing here, with no real intention on letting my daughter spending any time with her siblings or me, unless it was HER way or NOTHING at all. I tried to explain to my mother than keeping her away from us was just hurting her and shooting herself in the foot in the long run because she was going to lose my daughter the same way she lost me. People only believe what they want. They can only handle the truth of life that they create for themselves as it fits into their dysfunction.
So I refused to put my two other children in danger by having them leave the safe haven of @gardenofeden, and as a result we did not get to see my daughter for her birthday. I'm not too concerned though because someone she will understand she makes her own choices. When she wants to come and visit us, then she will, regardless of what anyone else says to her.
This lesson actually helped me clear my issues with not seeing my daughter. She is a person just like the rest of us, and she is making her own choices in life, and she will experience the benefits and consequences just like the rest of us.
I found out my mother has been social media stalking me still, specifically reading these steemit posts. I find it very sad that a woman who has had so many opportunities to be a mother to me would rather continue to be a monster and just read about my experiences in life to try and "know me" or probably more accurately to criticize and tear apart a life that is the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I do not social media stalk my daughter. I don't even recognize myself as her mother any longer because she choose to remove me from that role in her life and I wish to honor her choice until she makes a better one. Anyway, I don't social media stalk her primarily because anyone who wants to keep my parents company is not really someone I have any interest in having in my life. I do not think they are good people, I do not think they made good choices, I do not think they are a good example, and I don't believe in anything they do as a way of life. I wouldn't hang out with them if I wasn't related so why would I just because I am related? Many people believe all that 'blood is thicker than water' business, but I don't subscribe to that dogma just because so many people do. I have seen how untrue that is first hand. When your parent offer to save your life ONLY if you give up your child in trade… that just doesn't seem like something people who care about each other would do.
Anyway, my daughter has an open invitation to be a part of my life and her siblings life whenever she chooses. Of course I still miss her. I was sad and cried on her birthday because not many people can remember what they were doing exactly 17 years ago on any given day. I remembered it as the first time I ever held someone in my arms that I loved. It is hard to forget something like that. Either it will happen again, or it won't. I won't let that be a dysfunction in my life any longer.
So the revised title is, "Goodbye Baby…. For now."
