True colors
It turns out that if you truly don't change your life for the better you can only hold up a facade for so long. Little by little things seemed to go down hill again. When Cindy would come home she would tell me that dad won't let her call me anymore and if she even asked to call home, he gets very upset and puts inappropriate guilt on her by saying "why do you need your mom, do you love her more than me?" he then started playing mind games with her, telling her my husband was the reason we were no longer a family, and that he was trying to replace him, as her father.
Disciplinary tactics became borderline psychological abuse. On any given day if he felt like she hadn't drank enough water he would put her in a corner and pour pitchers of water on her! One time she had gotten in trouble and he calmly asked her to bring him her favorite toy and then proceeded to smash it in a hundreds of pieces right in front of her. She still talks about that episode to this day. she told me she picked up a small piece of the toy of put it in her dresser so she could always remember it.
Anytime she would get hurt at his house he would start crying and begging her not to tell me or else "mom will never let you see daddy again!" So of course she was terrified to tell me anything.
Taking action
You may be wondering why I didn't immediately take action. Well out of fear and intimation, she didn't tell me most things until weeks or months later. Sadly there may still be a lot I don't know about.
I also found out (much later) that when they were living in a trailer in Amy's parents backyard, he made Cindy sleep alone outside in a tent so they could do drugs and smoke weed. Personally, I have nothing against people who smoke weed. I don't do it, but to each their own...just not in front of my child! At 3 years old she could describe it to me perfectly. What it looked and smelled like, and how silly dad's voice sounds when he inhales it. Since weed is still illegal in the state we live, smoking around a child carries even more danger here.
My first thought was to call CPS of course, not just because of the weed incident, but everything combined. I ended up speaking to a professional who advised against it. He said that since everything I knew was from weeks or months prior, there was no guarantee that anything would be done about it except for getting Cindy in trouble with her father. Which may not sound like a big deal, but it was. Anytime he found out that she told me what goes on, he would be irreparably mean and psychologically abusive towards her, therefore causing her to not want to tell me anything else. And since most of what he was doing wasn't legally considered abuse I made the choice to wait and bring up what I knew in court when I filed for custody. Where it would truly be to Cindy's benefit.
Trouble for Amy
During this time I received a few frantic phone calls from Amy. She had had enough of his drinking and anger, and asked me how did I deal with it during our relationship. I was at a loss at how to handle this information. Should I be honest with this young fragile girl and tell her that my advice was to run as fast as she could while she still had ambition and some self worth? Before he crushed her soul and made her feel like everything she did wasn't good enough, that she wasn't good enough. Do I risk my daughter losing the only somewhat mature and responsible parental figure she had at her dad's? At this point it was Amy who was providing all my daughter's needs when she visited her father. He once again was not working and was living off of the girl he was with. Amy was no saint, but she was young and impressionable, clearly with low self esteem. She clung to the first person that made her feel special, and then he used that co-dependancy to control and manipulate her. I knew this because it wasn't that long ago that I was that girl.
In the end I decided to tell her that this was a decision only she could make. I told her that everyone has a breaking point, and it doesn't matter what anyone else says, you are not going to leave until you're ready. To this day I'm not sure if Charlie knows about those conversations. And unfortunately she still hasn't reached her breaking point. As of now they have been together 6 years and got married last fall. Everytime I see her timidly and silently walking behind him I feel bad for her. In the brief moments I've seen her apart from Charlie she is happy and full of life. I'm somewhat hopeful that one day she will make the choice to leave if things don't get better for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment