Hard Decisions

I wrote this in December 2008.  It was in response to a fellow blogger's difficulties in trying to be a significant part of his kids' lives after a marriage breakdown and his ex wife's remarriage.
  It gives a little of the background of the situation with my older three children, born of my first marriage.

"My first husband left me when I was five months pregnant with our son, and our girls were aged 4 and 2. We were living in an outer Sydney public housing estate, which was as dodgy as it was isolated. We had no public transport, no shops and I had no car and didn't even have a driver's license at the time. I struggled on, coping with his sudden departure that came with no warning and no discussion, he just didn't come home one night. I had horrible morning sickness still and I look back at that time as one of the worst in my life. I had no choice but to go on, for the sake of the kids. And I did, and I did it well. I made a new life for myself, made new friends and gave birth to my son without my husband, but with my wonderful big sister by my side. After he was born life got better. I had an active social life and began dating again. However the old black dog was a regular visitor and it was during one particularly bad episode that I decided Paul needed to take the kids for a while. He refused. So when he brought the kids home after an access visit (he had a woman in his life to facilitate this of course) I just wasn't there and he was forced to take them back with him. In my fragile mental state I later decided they would be better off with him. His new sugar mummy lived in a much nicer area and owned her own home and I somehow thought this was important for the kids. WRONG. My husband had been a great and hands on Dad with the kids and I foolishly believed they would have a good and loving home. He was obviously only with this woman for financial reasons. He was a loser with money and brought no assets to the relationship at all. She was eight years older, with nothing going for her as far as looks or personality went, and she was clearly desperate.
I think, to hold onto him, she convinced him to go for custody and they won it, uncontested.
I moved house and got a job and at one time considered getting the kids back but I had nothing to offer them, or so I thought.
And so began my unbearably awful life as a non custodial parent. Silly me, I thought that as I had always been fair with Paul as far as access visits etc went, that he would be the same. I didn't factor in the insecure, desperate girlfriend who later became his wife. She did everything she could to stop me seeing and even talking to the kids. I went to court. They granted me fortnightly access all the usual crap, but of course with no follow up enforcing laws they were as empty as my life had become. I would take the train or borrow a car and drive to the Blue Mountains to get them and they just wouldn't be home. I would phone them, and be told "they aren't home". I would send birthday and Christmas gifts which I later found out would be rewrapped and given to them as if from their father and wicked stepmother. I got another solicitor. I went back to court. I fought for over two years at one point with no result. My children were being raised in a soulless home, by a demented woman, and a father who had suddenly turned into a distant, cold parent, I guess because nothing was required of him. I not only had to live with the guilt of giving my children up (my little boy wasn't quite two when it happened), but I also had to sit on the sidelines of their lives, unable to be a positive influence and a loving influence in their lives.
I remember one Summer afternoon, I borrowed a car to take them home, on one of the rare times I had them. I had had Katy by this time, she was a young baby and as it was hot I only had her in a nappy and singlet for the car trip. The car got a flat tyre on the highway. I discovered there was no jack, and it would have been dangerous for me to try to change it there anyway. I got all the kids out of the car and walked them single file up the highway to Springwood where I rang Paul and told him what had happened. He came down to get them and I asked him if I could borrow his jack to change the tyre. Not only did he not offer to do it for me (as any REAL man would have) he refused to loan me a jack and left me there as the sun was setting with a baby clad only in a nappy and singlet. I went to the station to catch a train home. In the waiting room was a hippy type woman who insisted I take a lovely white crochet shawl for the baby. I was so touched I almost cried. Katy was due for a feed by this time and I had no bottle with me. I panicked and got a taxi home, all the way from Springwood to Merrylands, which cost me all of what I had left in the bank. See what a nice man I picked to be my babies' daddy?
Finally after all the lawyers and court hearings I realised nothing was going to change and I just harrassed them by phone into letting me see the kids whenever I could. It was sporadic, and by this time they had been brainwashed into thinking I didn't care about them at all. They were told nothing about me or my family, and indeed they didn't know much about their father's family either. The Wicked Stepmother desperately tried to pretend that they (with her two horrible children) were one big happy family, even changing all their names to some hyphenated abomination. Couldn't she see that she wasn't hurting me? Well she was, but the ones who got hurt the most were the kids. They still bear the scars, and have trouble talking about their feelings, and trouble showing affection in some aspects. Now they are all grown and can choose for themselves whether they want to see me, and talk to me. And they do. Slowly I am rebuilding my relationships with them, but it's painstaking and painful for us all. To grow up thinking your mother doesn't love or care about you must be horrible. My childhood wasn't ideal in every way, but I always knew without a doubt that my mother loved me.
Something must be done to protect our children from people with bitter agendas. Parent's rights, whether they be mother or father MUST be upheld. Divorced men, in particular, in this country get a raw, raw deal. Men have been driven to suicide, to murder, to kidnapping all because they cannot be a part of their childrens' lives. And they should be. Kids need BOTH parents to grow up happy and well adjusted. We are raising generations of troubled people, these people are our future and what will become of us if we have all these maladjusted folk running the place? Over the top? I don't think so. Walk a mile in one of these parent's shoes and see how wrong the whole system is. Men who form lobby groups are labelled as bitter men rejected by their wives. Men should be tough, cop it on the chin. What a load of bullshit. Men have deep emotions when it comes to their kids, they just aren't encouraged to show that for fear of seeming weak. Male children especially, need their fathers. And girls need Dad to show them how they should be treated by the other men that will come into their lives. If Dad cherishes and respects them, they will accept nothing less from their husbands and lovers. This is a proven fact. Boys need Dad to show them how to be a man. How else will they learn?
All the anger and the frustration of all those lost years is in me now again. There is no happy ending, my children will be forever affected by this. I think that having their own children will help somewhat, as I have seen with my second oldest who is now a mother. She was the one who resented me the most, but motherhood has softened her and given her a new understanding, and she is the one I am closest to.
Yes I made a mistake. A HUGE mistake, but I have paid for it a hundredfold. But that doesn't matter, it's how my kids have paid for it, partly due to an ineffective and biased Family Court system.
As far as I can gather, in the US, if you disobey a court order you go to gaol. Simple. Men used to go to gaol here for not paying child support, but custodial parents can flout the law and get away with it.
It's just so, so wrong."
A lot has changed in almost four years, and yet nothing has changed.  My two younger children, who were more affected by the brainwashing do not speak to me at all, and I haven't seen my oldest grandchild in several years.  I was attempting to maintain an uneasy relationship with my oldest, and was enjoying seeing her two children sporadically.  But she is very strange, and hard to get to know, she runs hot and cold and wants to talk sometimes, and others does not.  Her husband "hates" his mother.  His word.  I think he influences Alison a lot, they are both very judgemental people, and I get the feeling they don't like Phill very much for some reason.
All these three children are rude, self involved and insensitive, a result of being dragged up rather than brought up properly and not having me as a regular part of their lives to teach them how to be decent human beings.  The step family (my ex husband is now separated from his second wife) are horrible, horrible people, who get drunk and start physical fights at every family occasion it seems, and yet my kids seem to prefer them.  Alison got married in Fiji because of them which meant I missed seeing her get married.  (They ruined her engagement party).
I have done everything I can think of to let these grown children of mine know that I love them and am interested in them to be hurt and turned away from time after time.  Why do mothers have to be perfect?  Why aren't fathers expected to be so?
I have now made the painful and difficult choice to opt out of Alison's life, I feel like I've been punished enough for my choices and ill informed decisions back then.  I won't be treated badly, not even by my own children.  It's sad but it's how it has to be.  I needed to re visit what I wrote back then and to get it clear in my own head how things are now. 
We got out in the yard today and pulled the overgrown garden out in the pool yard, Phill took out the log border and mowed all the rubbish into the ground and we're going to let the grass grow right to the fenceline.  It looks better out there already.  I finally found my secateurs and pruned two old and badly neglected rose bushes.  The ones I did early in the Winter are smothered in new shoots  and will flower this Summer I daresay.  Soon, as the earth warms, I will plant more herbs in the two little garden beds just off the back porch.  I don't care if we again have to move out and leave it all behind, I love to have a little garden and I think it's really nice to leave it behind when we go.  It feels like it's been such a long Winter this year and thankfully there are only two weeks left.  It was quite warm sitting outside earlier this afternoon after we finished work.  It's cooling down now and I've closed up the house and put the heating on. 
I'm tired and sad and weary today.  Better days ahead though, there always are.  Sometimes I wish I was more of a doormat and could just cop the shit that some people dish out, but I can't be anything else than what I am.  I have to come to peace with that, just as I have to make peace with my mistakes and disappointments, my failings and my wrongdoings.  And just try to do better tomorrow, with what I have.