When this year began, it held the promise of lots of growth and change. That promise has been fulfilled. Many ways being exactly what I expected and others, not even close. One of the changes, one that I should have seen coming, in some ways I knew was coming but didn’t want to see it, involves my oldest son.
I don’t typically talk about the specifics of my personal life on here, especially not my kids. I tend to be a very private person and I don’t think that you can get more personal that my children, so I tend to keep that to myself. This is such a huge issue for me, though, I feel that it needs to be shared.
My oldest son is from my first marriage. It wasn’t a great marriage, but the bad wasn’t something that you could really point out or that was obvious like physical abuse. We were just really incompatible. I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to last right around the same time that I found out I was pregnant.
During my pregnancy, I realized how bad of an idea it was to be bringing a child into that relationship, but I was terrified of raising it alone. I could see the signs that my husband would never be the kind of father that I thought a child needed, but I was already pregnant and not having a child wasn’t an option at that point. I finally got up the courage and determination not long after my son was born. He was only 4 months old when his father and I officially split.
My son is now 11. In all those years, his father has been around and had visitation. My ex would get him most of the time, but there were a lot of times he was scheduled for a visit that he canceled, often breaking some promise to my son about a planned activity for that visit. As time has gone on, he canceled more and more. It also depended on what was going on in his life at the time as to how regular he was in getting my son. If there was a stable girlfriend in the picture, the visits were more regular, but it seemed the girlfriend did more for my son than my ex did.
A couple of years ago, my ex was having a difficult time. He’d lost his job (again) and hadn’t been able to make regular child support payments. There were also a lot of missed weekends. At one point he suggested that my husband adopt my son. At the time, I thought that was a really bad idea and that he’d end up regretting it and that my son would end up blaming me for taking his dad away from him. I went to a lawyer and got my child support reduced to try and make things easier on him. I thought that it would be the best thing for my son to do everything I could to keep his dad in his life.
That lasted all of about 9 months. My ex lost another job and quit paying child support, even during the times he had a job. In the last year and a half or so, I haven’t gotten a dime from him. He has also missed more than half of his visits. For most of those, my son would at least get to go see his grandparents (the ex’s parents), but not always.
A few months ago, my former in-laws showed up to pick up my son for one of his father’s regular visits. I didn’t know they were getting him as I hadn’t heard from my ex. I found out when getting my son that Sunday that his dad had taken off. There was some issue with him being on a medication, that no one could tell me for what, and he’d quit taking it. Not having taken the meds brought about some sort of mental episode and he just left everything, including a new girlfriend and all of his possessions, and disappeared.
I found out bits and pieces from different people the week after that and it had me extremely concerned for my son’s safety. To me, my ex had had some sort of a mental breakdown. I was even more concerned about the fact that he’d been needing to take this medication for some time and I’d never even known.
No one bothered to call me and let me know what was going on with him. I didn’t care one bit for my sake, but my son was really worried and upset. We didn’t even know if his dad was alive. I had made the decision to keep him with me until we knew more. I wasn’t comfortable with him being at his grandparents knowing there was a possibility of my ex showing up.
I hadn’t heard a word about what was going on from anyone. By sheer luck and coincidence, I ran across him on Facebook through a mutual friend. He hadn’t been on before he’d disappeared(I’d checked right after joining because I didn’t want him to have access to my profile) and had been rather active in the last several weeks even though he hadn’t once tried to contact my son.
It came as a blow to find that out. My son had been worried and upset for the last several months because he didn’t know what was going on with his dad, didn’t even know if he was okay. I was left with a choice. Tell my son what I knew, or leave him in ignorance.
It wasn’t an easy choice at all. I felt that telling him about the FB thing would hurt him and that I may not be able to leave my personal feelings about his dad out of it. I also know that not knowing was even harder. On the advice of several wonderful friends, I chose to tell him. He took it really hard, but he understood that it meant his dad was making a choice not to see him. I wasn’t certain that he would.
Today, I got a call from my ex’s dad. They are wanting to see my son. Again, I am presented with another choice. I do believe that he is being genuine when he tells me that they are upset with my ex and that they also agree that my son shouldn’t be around him. I also believe him when he tells me that his son is no longer welcome in their home and that they support any decision I make concerning my son about child support and even custody. He did shed a bit more light on the situation with my ex as well. Apparently the medication was for bi-polar disorder, a diagnosis that really doesn’t come as a huge surprise to me.
All of this has presented me with yet another choice. I have to decide what it is I need to do legally with regards to custody. I want very much to go to court and have all custody removed from my ex. His abandoning his son speaks to his desire to be a father. His past actions only serve to reinforce that.
I have had to think about this for a very long time. It is an issue that seems to keep coming up. One of the things that gives me pause is whether or not it is the right decision. Not just for me, but for my son. Is it fair to him? I don’t think any of this is fair for him. Is it fair to my ex to permanently punish him? What if he were to get into the care of a doctor and got to the point where he cared and were responsible and wanted to see his son again?
That last one sticks to me. It is the reason we didn’t take my ex up on having my husband adopt my son a couple of years ago. I see it differently now. My ex is making a choice, whether or not he has the full mental capacity to make the correct one is really not the issue. He is making a choice. That choice is going to have consequences. There is no getting around that. You can’t make a choice when you are in a bad state of mind and expect it to be excused from all consequences. Just as I can’t expect my choice to be free from consequences.
There will be some point in my son’s life that my choice, no matter what it is, will be an issue for him. He may get very angry at me. He may blame me. That is something I’m going to have to live with. I will have made my choice understanding what those consequences could be.