Monkeys in the Closet

dad has a gun & he sezs hes going 2 shoot me.

WTH?!?  R U serious?

Yes and its loaded.

Ummmm…. if ur serious then u should call 911.

These are the texts that changed everything for us.  I was at work standing in the kitchen on my break.  I must have looked shocked because one of my co workers asked me if I was alright.  “I guess so…” I trailed off and tapped an answer before looking up.  “My daughter says her dad has a loaded gun and is threatening to shoot her.  God, they’re so dramatic over there!”

My response shocks me now.  I’ve been told that a disconnected sense of danger is a symptom of being abused.  I still take everything the counselors and social workers tell me with a grain of salt.  I’m open to their ideas and have learned a lot in the past few months.  Ultimately, however, these are my children and it’s up to me to decide how to protect them. 

It’s easy to keep them safe from bruises, stray dogs and pedophiles.  These are the dangers that are obvious and non emotional.  If a stranger attacks our children we can react decisively and without guilt to remove the offense.  When the offender is someone close to you it’s a much different animal.  In this case, it was their father. 

Since those initial texts, life has completely and violently collapsed on us.  I went from being relaxed and financially well off to collapsing into a nervous, teary eyed financial wreck.  Within 24 hours my ex husband wound up going to jail and my new husband and I took over custody of three very upset and confused teenagers.

When the policeman came to our house to tell me that my ex had been arrested and he needed the gun for evidence I went into a sort of shock.  I remember thinking that the most important thing was to stay calm and pretend like we were going to have a slumber party with the kids.  We picked up soda and pizza and headed over, little knowing that life for all of us was irrevocably changed.

My response to pretend like everything was okay was one of the reasons that things had been allowed to progress as far as they had.  Somewhere along in my life I had gotten the idea that I had to avoid ‘rocking the boat’ at all cost.  When you didn’t like something the adult thing to do was just grit your teeth and get on with things.  If I could just be cheerful enough everything would be okay.

And everything was okay for 17 years.  My marriage wasn’t perfect, but it was working.  I had a large, beautiful house, three gorgeous, smart kids and a wonderful dog.  It was picture perfect from the outside and pretty decent from the inside.  Everything worked fine until the kids’ dad (my husband at the time) had a plane accident.  He came back changed.  Something in him had snapped and started a long slow decent into domestic genocide.

I am a different person now.  I’m smarter and I know that always smiling does not make problems go away.  A friend once asked if I was always “terminally perky”.  I laughed, ignorant of how literally true that description of me would be one day.  I’ve also learned that the things that we’ve endured are not uncommon, now that I can see them in a better light.

At this time, we are still in the thick of things.  My ex is being tried in criminal as well as civil court.  We’ve moved out of the beautiful, large house to a collapsing and leaky dump in a bad neighborhood.  I’ve been reduced to hoping I could actually just feed my children.  We’ve had to leave all the pets but two.  So many mornings have found me in tears in the last few months.  I had to come to grips, finally, that I can’t really make everything alright with a smile.   My terminal perkiness has finally died.

I feel like I am standing on a hill, looking over the Armageddon of my life.  Every aspect of who I thought I was has been burned away by these events.  I survey what’s left with blank eyes and see mostly destruction and wasted loss… bitter remains of a once perfect life.  War has been here and left its dark mark.  Fear has set up residence.

But despite the encroaching dark I can see survivors.  My children remain, uncertain and hurt but alive.  They can grow thru this and become strong adults on the other side.  My new husband stands with them, supporting us all even tho none of this emotional carnage was his doing.  Where there are survivors there remains hope.  Where there is hope there is redemption.

It has become the time for me to do what I always do… write down what has happened so I can make sense of it and share.  Beyond my own circle of survival I can see the dim shapes of other figures stumbling lost thru their shattered landscapes.  I feel the need to articulate what I am learning for all our sake; for the hope that we may all grow thru this.

I’m ready to write down this story, but it isn’t mine.  It’s the tale of a hundred thousand plus.  They are all ages, all colors, and all levels of learning.  It’s the tale of the underdog and the lost child that resides inside so many of us.  It’s the tale of abuse.