650 Days

September 5th, 6th, and 7th, 2017. The day I learned speaking the truth revealed exactly what my marriage was about. 650 days. This is the amount of time the hurt and conflict has been going on.

I’m not a perfect man and made mistakes. As a young teen and going in to your 20s, there’s no way this can be true. Getting a career and having kids changed this perspective almost immediately. Humans are fallible creatures. And this goes to both parties in a marriage. There is responsibility by both people.

September 5th. Coming home from an outing with friends and laying in bed, reality set in. The years and issues that arose was developing this huge chasm between us. And then the question was asked “do you still love me?” I froze and didn’t want to answer. I even said as much but for hours I was harassed to give a response. And when I did, that instant blew up.

“I think you can be a great person and good mother and I love you as a person but the in love part has gone away.” That is all it took. The next hours were a back and forth, accusations, rehashing of issues already addressed and then the same threats of my parent’s marriage and how I would end up a loser. The threat of removing the girls from my life.

September 6th. After exhaustion set in and sleeping for maybe 1 hour, the oldest goes to school. Looks of disgust and anger. The youngest goes to school. I work from home and carry on with my day. I promised to talk about it later and she went to her salon. But this was part of the lie that had been developed for years.

My oldest daughter calls me crying and both are in hysterics. They’re on the road outside of a small Florida town heading to Georgia. I ask to speak to their mom and she tells the girls that because their father doesn’t love her anymore, they are going away. I tell her she needs to stop and that she’s using the kids and kidnapping them. I tell her this shouldn’t be going on and we should talk first. The phone hangs up. I call again and tell the kids to relax and that they’ll come home. Numerous calls from friends to her but it takes hours to convince her to come back.

The tension is back and the same looks are there. There’s no discussion, just words of the vows we took and that it means forever. I said sure but when one party of the two refuses to change, how can it be repaired. Add in the fact the kids were removed from school to head to Georgia and that seals it.

September 7th. The next day the same thing happens. She takes the phones away from the girls so they cannot contact me. I find out from my friend and neighbor that she heard over a phone call with her aunt, we’ll call her Ester, that they are going to ruin Jason financially and take him out. My friend says if I have anything liquid to move it fast. I do that and isolate myself. The aunt calls me after my ex-wife tries to use her debit card to buy fuel. “You’ve made a mistake and you’re going to pay. This is going to look bad on you.” “Sorry Ester but taking my kids and then threatening me will look even worse.” She still has her credit cards which are active and carry no balances but that doesn’t matter because she can’t spend cash.

September 8th. I find out from my oldest that her grandmother asks her who she wants to live with. She doesn’t answer but the grandmother says “if your daddy was smart, he would move back here to Georgia so that he could see you.” This terrifies my oldest. All this comes to me after what happens next.

I don’t hear from the kids for days. And that is when Hurricane Irma is approaching. I’m left to board the house and take care of the animals. September 9, 2017 is when people start to leave.

September 10, 2017 the storm hits. I get a simple text to be careful of the storm and she’s thinking of me. This was a cover. I later find out that in front of my daughters, they are calling attorneys in the Atlanta area to find a way to keep the girls up in Georgia and try to divorce me there.

Power is gone for a couple days and I get a call that she wants to come back down. I ask her to wait because there’s going to be traffic and cleanup going on. She leaves Georgia anyway and gets back in the middle of the night. I get huge hugs from the girls. The next day during cleanup, I get berated outside. She threatens with taking everything I have and taking the kids. The same line of “I’m going to make you a loser like your father” comes up. It’s the same dagger of my parents divorce used against me. I tell her we can come to an agreement and don’t need to be dirty. She disagrees and said she is going to ruin me. She tells the girls that their father is ruining the family and is going to hurt them.

650 days. No end in sight because the girls are being used as leverage. Her aunt notoriously calls herself the “Queen of Divorce.” Not a moniker that should be endearing but when vengeance is the goal, graciousness goes out the window.

The truth is supposed to set you free. In a way it did. It showed me the true colors of the person I was married to. The downside is that the utter destruction of me is the goal and the children are being used as pawns. The Family Court system is one that perpetuates abuse for all parties. When you’re a person who values getting one over on someone else, abuse is easy to use. Later blogs, I’ll lay out how the system turns a father in to a meaningless person, your rights are stripped away and the system is used to settle a personal vendetta.