Today was a beautiful day, a specially beautiful day ... Especially so, because I went for a beautiful walk with my 20 year old son, it was a windy, fresh (as opposed to the usual, hot) day. My older daughter's car drove past, as we were coming back into town. I rang her, because she had court today. She got caught, with THC in her saliva, a few months ago. She got her licence back, but also a good behaviour bond for two years.
She was upset, mainly because her Dad was so unsupportive and weird and she lives down there with him (I was the one to leave the family home, he wouldn't go and I am kind and didn't involve police, I was a shattered, deaths-door mess, when I left and he made up horrible destructive lies about me, to turn my children against me).
My kids are working things out, and coming to me now (most of them) for support and guidance. My daughter told me she feels much more supported by me than him, even though she lives with him and I don't see her or talk that often.
We had a long, really good, in depth, talk and, although she had been really down when I called, she was feeling good when we hung up. It was so good!
My daughter is 24 and setting up her own business. She designs and makes clothes. She s very very good and very focused and hardworking. I'm so proud of her. She's giving up weed; so frightening and risky, now that she has a good behaviour bond. It's probably daunting, because her dad is fanatically evangelistic about smoking weed. I, however, have been clean for years, with minor exceptions, but that was yonks ago.
I told my kids, "I think he's on the spectrum" to help them cope with how he is, because it's much kinder than saying "I think he's sociopathic" even though my psychologist believes he is. It's helping them get a handle on his extreme lack of empathy, his complete inability to respond to feedback about his transgressions and abuses and impacts on others. In a weird egocentric way, my ex does care about his children though. He cares about keeping them under his sway and being able to predate on them and hide his disrespectability behind the respectable guide of "parenthood" He can't be too overt anymore, he operates with deception and shuts down honest communication. My kids are struggling, but they have me close by and I am a great sense of security, despite them living at his (the house I procured for my family).
I have my youngest with me, he really has no relationship with his father, even though we live walking distance from him. He seems to be endowed with Atypical neuro wiring similar to his Dad, but I am his secure attachment and he tells me "I would be a sociopath, if it wasn't for you, mum". He says he has morals, because of me.
I am sad my kids don't have a more "normal" Dad, I am sad for them, but I had a lot of children so that they would have each other. I have two boys, 27 and 26 (second born is a "simple" boy-in-a-young-man's-body, a young man who will always be very childlike and needing high levels of support and care. He lives in supported accommodation, I had to get him out of his Dad's clutches, he was killing him slowing and sending him literally insane). Then my daughter, she's 24 and my next younger son is 23, they are close, but my 23 year old was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, I don't believe he has this, I think it's trauma and separation-from-me dyregulation, He's processing and in a solid relationship so I think he'll grow out of the BPD stuff. We are still estranged. It's painful. My next youngest son is most probably going to "come out" as "Pansexual" and identifies as "non-binary", he's the one I went walking with. My youngest daughter officially lives here, she's 17, working, studying, not here, a lot. We are good though. My baby is 12, veerrrry tall, he had his hair "layered" yesterday, it's quite long, He's very handsome but has genes from Dad, when it comes to emotionality, that can be frightening and triggery for me, but we are close, and he is "smart like me". He told me, a couple of days ago, that he wants to be a "neuroscientist". I am very supportive and have some great books to get him started on.:-). He's NOT going to turn into a malificent predator of a man.
