No. 25 - My Child Too

I heard the words as they were said, but didn’t quite comprehend them. A moment, two, three… then the realization of what was said slowly began to dawn on me. Slowly, at first, then with the stealth and numbing coldness of a winter blizzard my consciousness comprehended the spoken words. I sat there, frozen and shocked at what was becoming a greater sense of hurt with each passing moment.

How could it be that in a single moment in time, and with the stroke of someone else’s pen, my connection to my child would be relegated to seeing her “just every so often”? A tear fell. Then another. Don’t these people know my child needs me as much as she needs her Mother? Don’t they understand that balance is realized when there is both Mother and Father in the child’s life?

“Your Honor, you have stated you are doing what’s in the best interest of my child. I have stated my case, her Mother has stated hers… where is the proof that I am not worthy of spending equal time with my child?”

She looked at me through the wire frame glasses that seemed they would fall from her nose at any time. Her papers ruffled, a mass of charts, petitions, motions, and other such “legal” documents. “Sir”, she said, “the laws are set in stone and I’m obligated to stick to the rule of law in making my judgment. You are welcome to revisit this matter in the coming months if you have issue with the court. But my ruling stands.”

“Your Honor, I have provided for, cared for, loved and actively participated in my child’s life. I’ve been a good Father to her and I know this is not the right thing to do. I’m asking that you reconsider your ruling”.

Then I heard: “Your Honor, we thank you for your decision. We have no other concerns. If it pleases the court I have another case to get to…”, from the attorney sitting across the bench from me, her unsympathetic disassociation virtually seething from her pores.

I looked at her, a mix of rage, frustration, sadness, hurt, all creating a mosaic of ever-moving emotions yearning for release from within me. I looked at my child’s Mother, seated there, smug, uncaring… satisfied that she had hurt me. I then understood what it meant to be betrayed. I understood the deep psychological torment betrayal unleashed on the minds and hearts of the betrayed. My Spirit had fallen to a very dark and lonely place.

I sat there, perplexed. A moment in time now seemed like an eternity in Hell. To know that I would no longer have this child I had lived every day of my life with for and with for years, who I had fathered and had nurtured, who I had taken to doctors appointments and to school, who would follow me throughout the house as soon as I got home from work – My Child – was a blow to my psyche that would not be soon recovered from.

Did it matter how we had gotten here? Did it matter what one side or the other had to say regarding the dissolution of the marriage? Did any of that have any real value when considering what was being lost?

Some would say it did. Some would preach we should never get married if we were to divorce. Others would argue it serves a man right when there is a divorce because children are often closer to Mothers then to Fathers.

I say look to the child.

“Case number H334503-G now…”, was all I remember hearing as I sat there. I’m not sure if the Bailiff escorted me out or if I walked out on my own volition. I remember a haziness that distorted my focus as I looked at the lines of people who waited in the corridor, while walking out of the courtroom. I remember somehow collecting myself to keep from breaking down, showing some semblance of “manhood”. I saw my child’s Mother and her attorney walking cheerfully into the elevator. I chose the stairs.

When I finally got to my car I found it difficult to leave. I wanted to sit there for a while, hoping beyond hope that the experience I had just gone through was nothing more than a nightmare, or that is was someone else’s experience.

I reached around to get my seatbelt and caught a glimpse of a picture I had taped to the dashboard in hopes of good luck. A picture of my beautiful little girl, smiling into the camera, innocent, not deserving stared lovingly at me. Yet she, like so many other children nowadays, was to become the biggest loser in court today. For as a child, she does not – and should not – have the coping skills to deal with such a tragic breaking away from her parent.

The tears let loose in a torrent. And as I cried I realized one other reality that was a certain to come as the moments I spent lost in my sorrow. And what I realized drove my despair to an even greater level – I had fallen into the abyss.

This hurt and suffering, this broken connectivity to the familiar, this terrible feeling of aloneness and loss would not be mine alone. I understood that even as I have been caused to feel this way, it would cause the same, in My Child Too.

And the tears kept coming…