Right out of the gate: I was 18 and he was 26, turning 27 when we split, I had been just 16 and already pregnant when we got together, at that time he was 24.
I had zero support network, came from a broken abusive home, and hadn't been allowed to apply for jobs or do anything outside the house when we were a couple. When we broke up I had welfare and a single bed in my 12yo sister's room in our father's 2bdrm apartment. I was a junior high dropout with zero job experience and an abusive, drug-addicted mother who was completely in the wind.
He had two jobs - one full-time and one part-time that sometimes even paid more than the full-time job. He had a house, a car, two supportive parents with at least a veneer of family love and support, his church, a pricey lawyer, and several "friends" who would absolutely back him if needed.
He told me that leaving him was the worst mistake I would ever make. He said that I would forever be nothing and have nothing and he'd make sure of it. He said I belonged to him, period.
I left him because I was suffocating. I was having massive anxiety attacks, and I felt like I was either dying or already dead. He didn't want me to go back to school, he wouldn't allow me to apply for jobs. I had to beg for money to buy throwaway shoes at bargain shops because he didn't see the need. He criticized every single thing I did from my cooking to my wardrobe to the point that I just started doing exactly what he wanted, without question, so as not to rock the boat.
I wasn't allowed to go places without the kids, he wouldn't allow me to have sitters except his mom and only if it was for something he wanted me to do.
I was 16, he was 24...
Really give that a minute.
I have two amazing kids and one beautiful granddaughter. I birthed two other children and subsequently lost them in a non-consensual adoption. I wasn't ever allowed to know them.
As they grew, they were told really crazy stories about me and absolutely none of it was true. I tried many times over the years to maintain court-ordered contact, but my ex willfully kept them from me each and every time a visit would come, I would show up. There would be fresh tracks in the snow at the door. There's only so long I could do that.
I was poor. I didn't have the money for taxis. I wasn't allowed to walk them out. I tried to take it back to court. But they said I needed a lawyer or representation. I couldn't afford that, I couldn't afford the court fees, I was shit out of luck.
By the time I was finally able to see the kids regularly, it was only because they had been taken from their parents by CPS for abuse and neglect.
I went through all of the testing and visits to ensure I was safe because they had also been told all the stories the kids had.
My ex decided that he wanted to work to try to get the kids back. I was amenable to that with certain considerations.
At that time, Youngest Daughter was nearly 10 and I was already pregnant with Weemale. I told CPS that the ex could do whatever he needed to do however I was more than willing (and approved) to take in my girls as well as other two children that were removed from that home, two children that were not mine and one of them was actually only a stepchild to my ex.
All of this is documented on provincial files that could be requested as necessary, and the girls know that.
The entire fight through Family Court is both documentedand accessible. The files detail the number of times I brought evidence that he was intentionally keeping the kids from me during required visitation times and how many times, during the brief period of interim custody when they were in my care, that had to take them to the emergency room with injuries after they had been with him.
It's all fully accessible to both of the girls whenever they decide to request the files, there is a $25 court fee that I once even offered to pay but I was declined, my middle daughter said I probably somehow faked the records. Those files contain my living and employment situation, sources of income at the time, etc. As well as clear proof that the picture of me painted for them by their stepmother was demonstrably false.
Back to the CPS issues though:
When my ex completed all the parenting courses, it was stipulated that on completion, If he got a high enough score and if he signed a statement that he would separate from his common-law wife at the time and not go back to her, he would be allowed to regain custody of the children *if they chose* which I allowed them to do.
After that, things started to get complicated. Yes, he was separated from his ex. Yes, the girls chose to go back to him because that's the life they had known and I was a virtual stranger. They hadn't really been allowed to see me, other than the weekly visits after CPS had intervened.
When they were small, he would sometimes show up at my home at 4:00 a.m. with them sleeping in the back of the car because he had been fighting with his girlfriend again. Here and there, randomly, I would see them at a mall for a minute or three. I gratefully took the crumbs I was fed.
But the real bottom line is, they didn't know me.
Eventually, they started to come around a little bit on their own. One of them harboured a lot of bitterness based on the stories that she had been told, and she would lash out regularly and viciously.
It got to the point where I was afraid to have her around her little brother because the things that she said were truly unhinged.
At that point, I spoke to my ex. I said, "You need to get her counselling. You need to get her help. You need to tell her the truth. I can not allow her around my children in this state because she is dangerous." After that, she mostly stepped away from us. Aside from a few random rage-filled messages and threats over the years, she's done her own thing.
My oldest daughter came to stay with me for a while in her teens because her father had thrown her out because he said she was fighting him on everything and refused to follow the most basic rules, he claimed she was running wild. I wasn't sure I believed a word of it because - as I said, I didn't really know her but I did know how many lies he'd already told about me to drive a wedge so I wanted to give her, and us, a chance. I was happy to take her on at first but I didn't realize how big of a job it was going to be. She really didn't want to follow rules, she wanted to come and go as she pleased. She would come in intoxicated, and she'd get very emotional and upset over little to nothing.
Eventually, she came to me and told me she was pregnant.
I said "We need to contact First Steps and some community programs in the morning because I don't have the resources to care for you and your brand-new baby. Let's see what we can find to help us."
She was upset, she started packing her things, and she left in the middle of the night. I heard later, from her father and from others, that she claimed I had thrown her out in the street at 3:00 a.m. as soon as I found out she was pregnant, with nowhere to go and nothing but what she could carry. She wasn't pregnant at that time and actually didn't get pregnant for almost another two months after that occurred. It's another interesting turn that in her remembrances, her father also threw her and her kids out at 3:00 a.m. with nothing but what they could carry and nowhere to go.
Then I didn't hear from her for a while, I'd see her randomly on the street and she would act happy "Hi Mama. How are you?" Etc. There was no mention at all of the terrible things she was telling others I had done, no indication at all.
She started getting close to her youngest sister, who had moved out on her own, and she briefly stayed with her as I heard it; she borrowed money that she never paid back, took personal items, etc. and treated her sister quite poorly even though she'd opened her home to her.
Again, more years after that passed and she contacted me one night and wanted to stay overnight.
I was actually afraid to let her because I knew that she was fully engaged in active addiction at the time. The guy she was dating had been beaten and left for dead on a sidewalk in the north end and had his car taken, all by dealers to whom they owed money. It was not at all unreasonable that I was afraid!
Now, throughout all this, there had been a short time between my having "kicked her out" and her actually having her kids, and then making a connection with the baby daddy's family, and she'd been messaging me and trying to mend our relationship a bit.
Her baby daddy's mom found out that I had gone to a Pride parade and that I had met up with her there.
She proceeded to go completely crazy on social media, in both open Facebook posts, as well as really vicious, private messages.
Threatening me saying that, I should be dismembered that I should be disembowelled and my kids should be taken away from me that she didn't want me talking to my daughter and that if she spoke to me in any way or contacted me she would take the kids away from her, Etc.
She said that I was, you know, a dirty child groomer. My daughter refused to defend me and took that woman's side and then broke all contact until that night she called me, completely inebriated, asking to crash on my floor.
My personal belief has always been that it, the final wedge driven, was because of that woman, who gave her money, gave her liquor, and would babysit her children for free for weeks on end so that she could go out and do the things that she wanted to do.
I honestly don't know, but I know it wasn't long after that when she relinquished custody of her two boys to her father and then spiralled into full-blown active addiction, and started dating the boy that I had mentioned earlier, the one who had gotten the beat-down from their dealers.
I know that there's a certain narrative that she tells people in her recovery stories. I know that she claims that she "almost became her mama" and that she too was a teen mom who lost her children because she fell into addiction. She tells how she was a stripper (she was, and there's zero shame in that), and this and that. That she had unintentionally mirrored my life.
Unfortunately, that wasn't my life at all and was just the story that she had been told by her stepmother, and none of it was ever real.
And so, every now and then, I have to contend with her posting something hurtful or a random day when something gets back to me through the grapevine because it's not real.
Because there's nothing I can do that will ever change her mind.
Today is just another one of those days, and honestly, I'm so exhausted that I no longer care what anyone else thinks or believes.
I have two children that I raised and two that were adopted away from me as babies. I don't know them, I wasn't allowed to know them. I don't know what truth they're going by these days but it isn't the real one.
I know the actual truth. The actual truth is accessible to anyone who actually wants to know it and the rest of ANY of that is none of my goddamned business.
~this post is public because I'm not much about passive-aggressive nonsense or subtext drama. It's just another document out there, completely accessible if the people concerned ever care to access it.