I’m aware that in the following screed I keep switching back and forth from a narrative to directly addressing the people in question, but I am just too weary to go through and change it. Rest assured that when I say “you,” I do NOT mean you, the good people of the SDMB:
Just as none of us can possibly imagine what it’s like inside my brother Michael’s head, (he is an actual genius) I don’t think any of you can really understand what it’s like inside of mine. People tend to naturally assume that the people around them are pretty much on the same level they are. That is part of the tragedy of this situation, in that people of below-average intelligence continually made assumptions about me based on ignorance and their own limited experience with the world, and with a lack of emotional wisdom that is heartbreaking.
I believe also that, because of my parents’ highly dysfunctional upbringings (not to mention that of my brother’s wife) (all of them sexually abused by their fathers, and blaming their mothers) no one in my birth family seems to be capable of loving in a healthy way except myself, and perhaps my son. My parents never, ever hugged us, and never, ever said “I love you” to us. Not once, throughout my childhood. I know my son used to love me as fiercely as I loved him; I fear that his being doomed to the same cold, conditional regard that passes for love with my parents, coupled with the apparently myriad lies that he was told about me, have turned my beautiful smiling boy into another pain-wracked dysfunctional damaged human, and for that I revile my parents eternally. Damn it, I wanted to raise him differently, with love!
–And because they are not emotionally equipped to love others in a healthy adult way, they were tragically unable to have the least idea of the terrible, terrible pain that their toxic vengeful actions caused to my son and me. I know that if my mother had loved me the way that I love my son, she could never have done what she did. There are a thousand ways to step into a situation with love and respect, and effect changes for the better if you feel that those you love are going through difficult times. But only a sadly twisted mind would think that this is best accomplished by spewing hate at a kind, ethical, altruistic person who has only ever loved you and never done you (or her son) any harm, by kidnapping a 10-year-old boy and telling him that his mother didn’t love him, flatly refusing to let her see him despite the fact that she did nothing ever to harm or mistreat him, and by lying egregiously under oath to get your way. Oh wait, that’s right, you don’t have to lie under oath in probate court, because you never properly take the stand. “I swear that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge” doesn’t mean much if you aren’t too bright to begin with, and appallingly ignorant on top of it.
I feel so weary even thinking about going over the details yet again, but I know I must. My longtime boyfriend, with whom my son and I were living, began to develop mental health issues and ultimately threw us out at a time when my son had about a month of school left. We went to stay with a friend because you have to live somewhere, especially with a child. However, my son started hanging out with some kids I did not like or trust, and skipping school to do what all day I don’t know. I was about a month away from getting a Section 8 certificate, whereafter he and I would have no housing instability ever again. Since it was summertime, I thought he would be much safer spending the summer with my parents in San Bruno. Lots of kids spend the summer visiting their grandparents, except in our family where caring for a child is considered an odious duty and a huge imposition. Instead of coming to me with any reservations or concerns about my parenting, my mother freaked out and sent him far away where I couldn’t possibly get to him. I should have called the police right away, and none of this would have happened. It IS a crime, you know. My son said to me recently, “You couldn’t take care of me because of your lifestyle,” and I was absolutely stunned. We were homeless! For a couple of months! It wasn’t a “lifestyle choice!” And I knew quite well it was not working trying to look after him properly while staying on someone’s couch – that’s WHY I sent him to San Bruno, with my parents, as soon as school was out. A safe place, with people I trusted, ho ho. I knew that I would have my certificate before school resumed in September. I was trying to do the responsible thing, and my perverse and whacked-out mother somehow turned it into the complete opposite, the height of irresponsibility. Her clueless, yokel-like picture of what I and my “lifestyle” must be like in scary bad Oakland is so far, far off the mark that it is laughable. All of you with your smug, pre-packaged, childish and naive ideas about me, and you couldn’t be further from the truth. My son had been recommended for gifted classes the next year, yet my parents had him tested for learning disabilities, because “he must be stupid growing up with all those poor folks and black folks!”
Honestly, I have to wonder what you guys were doing the whole time I was growing up, because it doesn’t seem as though you were paying attention at all. I am not a libertine, a manipulator, a liar, a drugged-out spacecase, a criminal, a harridan, an alcoholic, or a fuckup. If you asked any twenty of my longtime friends, they would tell you the same. It was only a few months after my parents took away my son because they felt I was such a “terrible mother,” that my good friend hired me to be the nanny of her infant daughter for the next five years, and I doubt that she (or her daughter herself) would share your views on my parenting skills. What my mother told everyone (which I find out only now, after thirteen years!), that the only reason I couldn’t be with my son is because I “refused a drug test,” is a dirty lie. The judge refused to allow them to test me, because there had been no incidents, no wrongdoing that anyone could point to, and no contact with the police or other authorities. In other words, just her paranoid fantasy with not one iota of proof. Motion denied. I swear by all I hold sacred that this is true.
Why would anyone in good conscience say a thing like that? My god, what must my son have thought of me all this time? The ONLY reason (we had joint custody, after all) that I was not with him is that they continually ignored court orders, and refused to let me see him or even call him on the phone! Then they told him that I didn’t call him or see him because I didn’t care!
You destroyed my happiness when you all did that; and now that my son has just told me that he thought it was the right thing to do, my heart is completely broken. Having him here living with me this past year, now that he is grown and free, is the only thing that had started to heal the unspeakable pain in my heart from what you did to us. But I have always assumed that he of all people understood the magnitude of the grievous wrong done to us, because he was right there and it had to hit him worst of all. To find out that your years of lies, violating court orders by denying me my visitation time, (and then violating new court orders by continuing to deny me visitation time even after I was forced to take you back to court repeatedly) finally accomplished your goal, convincing him that he was somehow the victim of MY parenting, all of my fierce undying love, our close bond and my unending joy in his very existence – that it was all of that on my part that did him harm, rather than the relentless guilt tripping, cold shouldering, distrust and vindictiveness that is my family’s parenting style – this is more than I can take. One of my older friends tells me that my parents’ goal all along was to “break” me, and their hateful actions the result of my refusal to be broken, refusal to bow down and say that black is white, say that good is bad, say that they were right. Well you have finally succeeded in this goal, but not in the way you wanted. You never broke my mind or my spirit, but you have finally broken my heart. I have, overnight, become bitter – the one thing I have been bound and determined all my life to never, ever be, no matter what. What could ever motivate even an indifferent grandparent to say such hurtful, destructive things to my poor little boy? That kind of pain doesn’t just go away. How do they even sleep at night?
I can’t say that I want to die – for I do not – but I simply cannot see any joy in life for me from this point forward.
Here’s one Doper who thinks you are a great person!