Letters From a Single Mom

Ex,

There is SO much that I have wanted to say to you for so long, but a great deal of it is full of anger, hurt and is in no way helpful to the situation you have put us in that I feel it is inappropriate to express them, but for one of the things that is mostly just full of confusion I can’t be quiet about any longer.

You have repeatedly told me that you hate the fact that I have expressed my emotions regarding the situation in front of my son. Hell you have even gone so far as to accuse me of emotionally abusing my son because I have cried in front of him and have even threatened to report me to Child Protective Services for emotional abuse. However, today when you were picking my son up for his visit I tried smiling while talking and saying goodbye to my son in an effort to provide him with support and encouragement. Instead of accepting what I was trying to do (or at the VERY least) keeping your mouth shut, you were apparently compelled to make a comment about the fact that I was enjoying the fact that my son was holding on to me like his life depended on it and unwilling to acknowledge you. Beyond the fact that you have no one but yourself to blame for your relationship, or lack thereof, with my son such comments, particularly in front of him are highly inappropriate.

It would not surprise me to learn that you want me to be enjoying how strained your relationship is with my son. I can imagine that it would make hating me, which you seem to be putting so much energy into, easier. The truth is that I am not happy. I am not happy about anything and that includes not being happy about the fact that my son doesn’t get all excited about seeing you. There are a lot of reasons for this and since you will most likely never read this or get this far if you do come across this post by meer happenstance I will not go into them. I can say this though — IF either one of us is capable of truly finding enjoyment with my son showing favoritism to them and shunning the other than it will be you.

I know you. I know you better than you want me to. I know you better than you know yourself and so feel confident in saying that your reasoning behind the comments that you made today (as well as many of the others that you make) is to cause the most amount of pain you can with as little effort as possible all while allowing yourself to feel justified in making the comments. You imagine you are being attacked so you are allowed to strike back. While some of this is subconscious and based on the way that you “learned” to fight while growing up the rest is you just trying to make yourself feel better at the expense of someone else. Someone that you know you can seriously wound. Classic bully. One of these days, if I am very lucky, you will learn that your attempts to blame me for your failures as a husband and father were nothing more than your attempts to not feel guilty. You’ll realize that it was not the fact that my son preferred to breastfeed rather than eat from a bottle (so that you could feed him) that prevented you from being able to bond with him. You’ll realize that it wasn’t my occasionally crying in front of my son because of how hurt or upset I was that made you look like an asshole in his eyes. Instead you will realize that it was the way that you verbally degraded me in front of him, the way that you choked me while I was holding him, they way that you repeatedly, and in front of my son, would say that you did not believe him to be your son and that you did not want to be a father any more, the way you immediately turn on someone when you don’t get what you want the moment that you want it or that you always obsess over any imagined slight so that when you get angry enough you can say that you have justification for systematically erasing them from your life. You’ll realize that YOU were the one who prevented the development of any real bond with him. You’ll realize that you can not refuse to do the work because you already believe that your attempts will fail and then turn around and blame others for that failure when it comes. You’ll realize that your failures are yours alone, that your attempts to convince yourself that the fault lies with others is hypocritical, at best. You’ll realize that you can not have your cake and eat it too.