XH had spent that day getting drunk and then passed out after dinner. Both girls were still awake by the time I had to leave for work, so I tried to wake him up. After several failed attempts to wake him up, I pinched his side which finally woke him up enough to roll toward me. I was standing next to our bed holding our 9 month old when XH swung his arm around and punched me in the leg. I stumbled backwards and tried not to fall with the baby in my arms...and he just rolled over and went back to sleep like it was no big deal. It was the first and last time XH would ever hit me. I loaded the kids up in the car, woke my mom up to watch them for me, then I left for work so I didn't lose my job.
That Monday, I called Legal Services (income-based legal aid) and made an appointment to start the divorce process. I also called about a two-bedroom apartment in town, but it took a little while for the manager to complete all the paperwork and get the apartment ready. It gave me time to pack up all of our stuff, but XH was being impatient. He was staying at his parents house...and called me every single morning to tell me that I needed to hurry and get out of the house.
While I was moving, XH and his family waited outside. I felt pressured to rush so we worked as fast as we could. I told him I'd come back another time to get my things out of the garage since we'd just been using it for storage anyway. But the next morning, XH called to say I had to get my things out by June 1st or he was going to serve me with an eviction notice. I told him that he couldn't just evict me from a house that I still legally own. Then he said a friend of his (another local cop) walked through the house and took pictures of how I'd left it...when he was standing outside waiting for me to leave. Once again, XH was manipulating the situation for his own benefit. The only mess I'd left was a bag of trash and all the crumbs and crap that had been accumulating for over a year under the huge sectional couch that I couldn't move to vacuum under. He tried to say that the entire mess had been created during the week he'd been staying at his parents' house waiting for me to move. He kept moving from one argument to another until I finally just hung up the phone.
Aside from the daily phone calls from XH, things were going well. Even though I'd been living as an adult for five years, it was the first time I felt like I was truly living on my own. I no longer had to run every decision by XH for his approval. I was finally free to make my own decisions. Even little things like being able to buy the kind of toilet paper I wanted...it made a huge difference in how I felt as an adult. I felt like I was taking control of my life and making things better for myself and my kids.
Unfortunately, it was also the start of an entirely new nightmare. I came back from vacationing with my family in Branson (which he had already known about because it was planned long before we split up) to be served with divorce paperwork that XH filed while I was out of town. It was the same family friend who had represented him in a DUI case four years earlier. Despite the fact that the children were already living with me, XH had given himself custody with me having "reasonable visitation" that he could randomly set and change at his discretion (which he did) as well as getting $354 a month in child support. My gross pay at that time was about $400 every two weeks so the net pay I was actually bringing home was about $700 a month (I'd been working about 20 hours a week at $13 an hour).
When I'd met with the paralegal on June 1st, I'd asked her about that very scenario...if XH could just give himself custody like that. The kids weren't even in his care (or even in the same state) at the time he filed his paperwork. She said that he could not legally remove the kids since I'd been their primary caregiver and they were already living with me. But that's what a narcissist does...whatever he wants.
I'd done everything I was supposed to do. Everyone says to document everything...and I did. I kept a detailed journal of everything that happened each day. I kept all receipts. I got copies of police reports and court documents. I had a letter from our family physician and photographs of the injuries XH had caused me and the children. I had photos of my home--both my apartment and our house prior to the separation--to contradict XH's claims that I was living in filth. However, none of that matters if your attorney doesn't actually use any of it.
While the paralegal had been extremely helpful, my lawyer was useless. I didn't even meet her until the first court hearing to change the temporary orders. Before we were to appear before the judge, I told her that I wanted primary custody with XH having visitation for a few hours two days a week and one overnight each weekend (which was recommended to me by another more expensive attorney). Her only response was "he's not going to agree to that." My attorney clearly had no desire to actually work for me. She'd already talked to XH's attorney and didn't seem to care about what I had to say at all.
So I stood before the judge and listened to XH's slimy attorney repeat every lie that had ever come out of XH's mouth. His lawyer even went so far as to tell the judge that neither of us were fit to have custody and that it was "probably a CINC case," which stands for Child in Need of Care. At the time, I couldn't believe that no one seemed to notice the guy had just said his own client wasn't fit to have custody. However, I later found out that XH had told his lawyer that his mom was the primary caregiver of the kids...so they were trying to set the stage to argue that XH's mother had de facto custody...which was NOT true at all.
Despite having all the proof in my hands to refute everything that had just been said, my attorney only told the judge that we "obviously" needed to go to mediation...and that was it. While mediation is standard, I knew it wasn't going to matter. If compromise was possible with a person who has narcissistic tendencies, we wouldn't have been in that position in the first place.
As I predicted, mediation was pointless. Coming off what XH considered to be a "win" in court, he sat in front of the mediator with a smug look on his face and refused to come to any sort of agreement that didn't give him what he wanted. He didn't care what was best for the kids or even parenting them at all; he was only interested in having control and making people think that he's dad of the year and I'm a horrible mother...just like when we were married.
I was faced with an entirely new reality...one where XH used what control he had to manipulate the time I got to spend with my kids. They were home with me everyday during the week while XH was at work. At first, he wanted me to pick them up on my way home from work so he could sleep at night. However, that changed when he got pissed off at me. I'd gone out with my best friend for her birthday during XH's weekend with the kids. He wasn't with the kids though...he was at my apartment when I got home at 11pm. He accused me of "whoring around" and decided that the kids couldn't spend the night with me anymore...despite the fact that this was my weekend without the kids in the first place. So XH started keeping the kids during the nights I worked and brought them home at 5am everyday on his way to work. How late I kept the kids depended on what XH was doing on any given day. He'd randomly change the time based on his work hours, plans he made after work, if he was "sick" or too tired...whatever.
XH also wanted to control when (and for what reason) I could take our children to the doctor. When they were on his insurance, he tried to withhold the insurance cards from me because he didn't want me to "use up the insurance" he got every year. Either he doesn't know how PPO insurance works or he thinks I don't, but it was irrelevant to his argument. Luckily, the card was on file at our small town doctor's office and we were only there a couple times a year anyway. And it's not like XH was paying any part of the copays or prescriptions, so it shouldn't have mattered. But again...it was only about his desire to control every aspect of my life that he possibly could.
I tried to make sure that my feelings about XH didn't cloud the relationship our kids had with their dad and his family. But while I was trying to do right by my kids, XH just used it as another way to criticize me. Every once in awhile, our three year old would ask to see XH or his parents, so I'd call and ask if they wanted her to go over there for an hour or two. I was trying to show that I had no intention of keeping the kids away from their family (because his mother kept saying that was her biggest fear), but instead I was met with accusations that I "just want to get rid of the kids." There was absolutely no way to satisfy his family at all. In their mind, I was and would remain the bad guy, no matter what.
The only positive thing that came from the custody battle with XH was that I became the kind of person who learned to "let go" and not worry so much. I had virtually no control over what was going on at the time and there wasn't much I could do about it. My choices were to succumb to the depression or find a way to be okay with my life as it had become. I realized that happiness is a choice, I just had to make it...though it wasn't always an easy thing to accomplish.
I found solace in a friend from work who had also been through a messy divorce. He was awarded primary custody of his children, so his advice and calm demeanor comforted me through all the chaos. We had so much in common and I fell deeply in love with this man. We started dating on 6/28/05 but kept our relationship separate from everything else in our lives. We were both going through a lot at the time, and we didn't want to add more stress for either of us.
He was there for me when I was faced with going home to an empty apartment. I made the decision to leave my husband because I thought I was making things better for me and my kids...but it was hard to feel like it was better when XH was using the kids against me. Once or twice a week, my new love and I would hang out and talk in the parking lot at work or we'd drive out to a nearby lake for a few hours until it was time for me to go home and wait for XH to drop off my kids. We never went to each other's home and we didn't involve our children in our relationship. It was a relationship just for us...to lean on each other in the midst of our complicated lives.
XH showed up at my apartment one night in August wanting to talk. He was crying to me about wanting to better himself and how he'd been going to church again. He said he was going to quit drinking...which I'd heard so many times before. I just listened to him ramble and wondered what he was trying to accomplish. After five years of dealing with him, I knew better than to believe anything would actually change...and there had to be some hidden motive behind wanting to talk to me.
Then out of nowhere, XH asked if I was dating anyone. I was surprised by the question and simply told him that my personal life was none of his business. He started calling me a whore and accusing me of bringing strange men around our kids. He didn't listen to anything I said, he just kept yelling about how he was going to beat this guy up for sleeping with a married woman...despite the fact that our marriage was all but legally over and we were never getting back together. Then XH seriously told me that I needed to make an appointment to have my IUD (birth control) removed. According to him, he "didn't pay for it to have someone else use it." He honestly believed a judge would side with him on that issue. I just told him to get out of my apartment and locked the door behind him.
The next morning, XH continued his tirade. He knocked on my door and pushed his way into my apartment. He tossed mail and papers off my desk and kicked the toys on the floor. He pointed at the folded laundry on my couch and said that my apartment was "trashed" and that I obviously never do the dishes (since there was a bowl, two cups, and some silverware in my sink). He told me that I needed to watch what I do because he was going to have the kids taken away from me...because I was such a horrible mother.
Then he informed me that he and his mom had been driving by my apartment and writing down all the times I wasn't home after work. It was in the middle of the night when HE had the kids, so I'm not sure what he thought it was going to prove other than the fact that he was being a psycho stalker. Then he threw a piece of paper in my face and yelled, "What the hell is this?!" It was a note from the guy I'd been seeing. XH had actually searched through my car and found it. I shouldn't have been so shocked that he would actually go to such lengths, but I definitely made sure my doors were always locked after that.
The guy XH was so upset about? It was Johnny...the same man I'm with now. The man who respected my need for discretion and my desire to keep the kids out of our relationship back then. The man who has no history of domestic violence at all. The man who doesn't drink alcohol. The man who avoids confrontation like it's the plague and would never intentionally cause problems for me, my kids, or even my ex-husband. Not that XH knew any of that...because he didn't care. He was just pissed for the sake of being pissed.
With the drama that XH was creating in my life, a distance grew between me and Johnny. He'd also taken a new position at work, so we weren't getting to see each other much, either. Eventually it all just became too much and we went our separate ways in October 2005. That didn't stop XH's smear campaign, though.
XH started telling everyone that he filed for divorce because he caught me cheating on him while we were married. On top of that lie, he would come up with the most ridiculous stories to talk himself up and make me look like a horrible mother. One particular situation comes to mind when a friend of his was chatting with me online and I told her how I was tired of XH's insane jealousy. She said, "he is way past you being with all the guys you have been with." I was like...wait, what? She continued, "I mean dated, around , slept with etc..... I dont know how many there have been I just know a hand full of names. But he is far from jealous or ticked over the guys. I think it probably has alot to do with the girls. Different guys being around when the girls are around, he might not know why certain people are around but when his girls are seeing different guys coming and going it probably bothers him some. He could care less what you do with yourself but when the girls are involved and the care of his children I know how protective he is over them." I had only slept with ONE guy (Johnny) who had never been to my apartment and had not been around my kids back then. And I was not dating "guys" who were coming and going from my apartment at all. I was so deeply in love with Johnny and I was heartbroken after our relationship ended. So what XH described was not how I was living my life at all.
But she assumed I was lying and sent me this email that XH had sent to her in September 2005: "I went to drop off the kids and candi has a whole house full of idiots. They must have went out last night and then to breakfast. I just had to keep telling myself that it wont be much longer until she loses the girls. It just hurts to know that she never thinks of the girls. there were four guys standing in the livingroom. I kind of resorted back to my old self for a minute. I caught my self sizing each one of them up, trying to decide which one was going to be first. Then I remembered you asking me where I would be if I was my old self, so I turned around and swallowed my pride. That and the girls stayed in the living room. Man, that guy has to be out of his mind to stay there after we have got into it so many times. I guess I dont pack the punch I used to anymore. What to do, he just wont stay away from the kids."
The thing is...absolutely none of it was true. There was no one at my apartment that morning when XH brought the girls home on his way to work...or any other morning, for that matter. Johnny didn't even know where I lived and the time we spent together was just the two of us. XH had never met Johnny and didn't even know what he looked like...and they'd certainly never gotten into a fight.
The REAL story of that morning (which I know because I was documenting everything like I was told) is that I'd gotten mad because XH brought the kids home and they were filthy from playing outside. The bottoms of their feet were literally black and obviously they'd gone to bed that way since it was 5am and they'd just woken up. I cleaned up the kids and they went back to sleep for a couple more hours...and that's it. It's certainly not the exciting morning XH had written about in his attempt to gain sympathy from the woman he was trying to impress.
Yes...the woman who had befriended me was actually dating XH. And the truly ironic thing is that this woman was a mother of three who was still very much married and living with her husband at the time...and seeing XH on the side. She lived out of town and would travel to see him periodically. She had even been around my kids multiple times...and is evidenced by the photos of the two of them, her kids, and my daughters at the zoo on 9/18/05. He was sleeping with a married woman at the same time he was calling me a whore. But it's typical of XH to criticize others for what he is actually guilty of.
I knew about the affair and wasn't surprised considering the way he talked about their friendship when we were still married. I didn't say anything about it because she seemed like a decent person aside from the affair and her marriage was her business. Unfortunately, XH didn't have the same respect for me...but that wasn't unusual either. He's no stranger to hypocrisy, that's for sure.
After months of fighting with XH, we sat down with our attorneys for a settlement conference. I listened to XH's lawyer continue to berate me, which just made XH feel vindicated, of course. Like usual, my attorney didn't say much. We hammered out some details and my attorney drew up the final paperwork which was filed on 8/16/2006. I settled on shared 50/50 custody because I thought if everything in the arrangement was basically equal, XH would eventually stop fighting me all the time. But...that's not what a narcissist does. XH was quick to tell anyone who would listen that I was a terrible mother who "couldn't get" full custody of my kids...despite that I'd agreed to shared custody before our case was even heard by a judge.
All the lies XH told about me became overwhelming, especially because I had so much proof to the contrary. He made up stories to tear me down in an attempt to make himself look better. He spent more time talking about what a horrible parent I was...than he did actually being a parent himself.
But there were moments when someone would see the light. Even his friend who was having the affair with XH later came around. She emailed me almost a year later and said, "And yes he made you out to be a terrible person. He acted like you never did anything with your kids and you were just whoring around with everyone. But when I would look at your pictures on your website you had back then, all there was were pictures of you doing stuff with your children. He confused me very much with the lies. I know you weren't stupid to the situation that was going on, but man was I stupid. it has to be the WORST mistake in my life. I was so wrapped up in everything that I couldn't get out. I do want to tell you that I am Sorry for judging you and being the way I was toward you. I was sucked into something that I regret. I understand how you got sucked into the relationship with him."
I decided that anyone who believed his lies wasn't close enough to me to matter. Those people who were actually around me could see for themselves what kind of person I was. If they believed the lies that XH was telling, then they really didn't know me at all. I decided to use it as a measure for which people could be eliminated from my life. I didn't need to prove myself to anyone but my kids and nothing XH said could change the truth. I had to let that be enough for me.
Read on: Part 3: The Legal System.
Read on: Part 3: The Legal System.