I did not know that August 30th 2014 would be our final night together as a family.
N was nine months old.
We lived in a two bedroom apartment in a 1960’s fourplex on Santa Clara Avenue in Venice, a place we’d only snagged because J knew the couple next door, a humorless, unsmiling, serious woman called Lisa, her nine month old daughter, and her dark haired husband with a hipster moustache and blank black eyes. They were kind but weird. Not my people. Lisa would think nothing of dropping 4 grand on an eco-friendly mattress, and wandering down to Gjelina for take out every day, but they claimed not to have money. Once she told me she’d returned all the disability money she’d received from the state after her daughter was born. “I didn’t need sixteen thousand dollars,” she said primly. “I sent it back so someone who needed it could have it”. J and I smirked at this and did not have the heart to tell her that wasn’t how it worked. I was learning, slowly, to keep my mouth shut in certain situations. A Herculean task for someone with impulses as fast as mine. Most times a sentence would be out of my mouth before I’d even register it. The more nervous I was, the more likely I was to say something to piss someone off. The more nervous I was, the more likely I was to piss J off. It was not hard. My presence was enough. I couldn’t simply write it off to being a new parent. This had been going on for eighteen months now. We weren’t sleeping together. If I touched J he shrank back like I’d burnt him. His smell - old sweat, stale cigarettes, sour booze - made my body, roiling with hormones, want to heave, so I kept my distance.
After months of refusing to work, and with only periodic work before N was born, J had reluctantly agreed to go back to the canyon restaurant a few nights a week. This did not improve the atmosphere in our house. He was furious and resentful that I was not willing to be the sole provider for the family, and that I had somehow outsmarted him in his desire to be a stay-at-home father. I was not sleeping, flooded with adrenalin, poised, ready for a new explosion, exhausted from breastfeeding N every hour. When J was awake, he’d play with N, growl at me, then flee, leaving a wake of crumbs and ash and papers and boxes and dustballs and dirty dishes and laundry.
My friends, all new mothers, all of whom had babies around the same time as me, knew we were going through trouble. They had seen the eye rolls, the sneers, the barbed comments, the physical distance. They had smelled the smoke and the whiskey and seen me, drawn and shrinking, drop from a size 8 post pregnancy, to a size 0. My closest friends at that time were Violet, a Chinese-American gentle artist, calm and kind and sweet, her British husband Greg, stoic and supportive. I’d confided in Violet that I was worried about J, that he wouldn’t work, that he had relapsed on drugs during my pregnancy, that he had hit me, stranded me in the desert after drinking a bottle of whiskey, had had some kind of a breakdown which was substance related, was running me ragged. She was kind to J, but firm and unafraid. She would tell him the truth, which not many people were willing to do. She believed me. My family believed me, but my family were 6,000 miles away. No one else. My family and Violet, and maybe my therapist.
My therapist, who specialized in postpartum depression, told me I was depressed because I had an asshole for a husband. She made me write an emergency plan. If something were to happen, if things were to spiral out of control as they had done multiple times in the last eighteen months, if I felt unsafe for any reason, I had to have a designated safe place to go. My safe place was with Lara and Jon, a couple I had met in my birthing class. I had done three different birthing classes, like the obsessive, anxious, nerdy mom I am, desperate to get all the information and do this momming thing right. L and J were in my third class, which was held in the living room of a shabby, rundown Mar Vista bungalow belonging to a middle aged woman in her fifties, Jana. Jana had vibrant orange hair, a reptilian stare, the kind of ‘don’t fuck with me’ demeanour I admired.
Lara and Jon were kind, nerdy, techy and deeply in love. They were goofy and cute and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. I wanted desperately what they had.
The birthing class had been hell. As J snored and reeked of smoke, the other four couples politely looked away. On day one, Jana, the facilitator, asked each couple to say one positive thing about their partner which would make them a good parent. It came to J’s turn. I had to poke him until he woke up. “I can’t think of anything,” he announced smugly. There was a long, awkward pause and a Holy Fuck did he really say that? moment. For a moment I thought I might cry. I blinked, and kept my face impassive, because I knew I was about to bawl. Jana’s face soured. “You have to say something” she said coldly.
“I can’t think of anything.”
Jana’s voice dropped an octave. She wasn’t taking this shit.
“SAY SOMETHING” she hissed.
“I don’t have anything for you,”
“Well I’m not letting you out of here unless you come up with one good thing about your partner,” she responded icily. This time she got through.
“I guess… she doesn’t give up easily?” he said dismissively, and laughed to himself.
The birthing class was full of love and handholding and rubbing backs and excited talks about the future and I sat there like a pillar of salt trying not to leak out the devastation in my life. Later, I went back and spoke to the other couples about this time. I wanted to know if they had noticed anything off about J, about us. I wanted to know if this exchange was as poisonous and terrifying and momentous as I had remembered it to be. I wanted to know if the poisonous dynamic between us was obvious to anyone else but me. I have learned not to trust my memory, because my memories have been distorted and denied and disproven. My memories have become rewritten, and what I had relief on - my writing - was, simply, banned. The courts banned me. My lawyers banned me. This substack - everyone will tell me it’s a terrible idea. But for ten years the words have simply stayed stuck and simmered, and the world has only seen someone with promise suddenly stuck, stymied, fail to progress. They can see there is something not - right with me, but they do not know why, or how, or the extent of it. I am writing now to make sense of this. To make sense of what happened to me, and who I have become. I’m writing now because the alternative is that this consumes me completely and leaves nothing behind. I’m writing because I want my life back.
What I have stated as fact over the last ten years has evaporated. Disappeared, eliminated, deleted. Before all this happened, I trusted myself, and my opinions, and my memories, and my words. I trusted them so much I turned them into books and journalism and screenplays and art. I felt like I had something to say, I felt like I had the right to disagree, to be correct, for someone else to be wrong.
Then I met J.
Here is what one of the moms wrote to me back in 2015:
I did feel tension between you two in class, and sometimes a less than respectiful/reverent attitude toward you and what you were about to do (birth N!) from him. He seemed to joke around a lot or make snarky remarks sort of under his breath sometimes that made me feel concerned
A few weeks after the torturous birthing class ended, I was in a sliding scale therapy session. I’d been going once, then twice, then three times a week, then my therapist gave me her cellphone number and an after hours number for the company. Therapy had taken a dark turn: how to squirrel money away so he couldn’t spend it and I had a means to escape, details of the latest cop call out [later my neighbors would rewrite the narrative and say that these call outs were all my fault. My screaming was unnecessary. My raised voice was not fear, they said. But violence. Fear was violence]. I was facing the stark reality that I needed to get the fuck away from J, that something huge needed to change. I had been considering going home to the UK to have N on the NHS, but this posed problems. My elderly parents, never what you might call nurturing at the best of times, would probably not be able to stand me for more than a couple of weeks. I’d have to find someplace to live, someplace to give birth, some kind of community. J was furious when I told him I wanted to leave. He used it against me. I was threatening to steal his child! I was threatening to destroy his family! I ended up staying because I was too scared to face his wrath, and I was too invested in trying to ‘fix’ him. Could I just weather this shit out? Could I just keep talking and trying with J, coaxing him into therapy, trying to gain his confidence? Did not all marriages go through rough patches, especially when facing money and birth stress? Was this, like I felt, something more, something worse, something altogether more poisonous and more dangerous? Or was I crazy? Was I insane? Was I histrionic, dramatic, a bitch and difficult, as J would have me believe?
I walked out into the sunlight blinking, exhausted from all the crying, my mind scrabbling away, trying to find a solution that would not enrage J, endanger me, and end up with a bunch of legal shit to deal with. I found my beloved VW van parked on Wilshire, climbed in. Sat for a moment. Spoke to N, who hiccuped in my belly and kicked me between the ribs and then went back to sleep. He was a very sleepy child. My vision was blurry from the tears, and so I scrolled through facebook mindlessly until I was safe to drive. A picture of a baby footprint on Lara’s page popped up. They had their baby! Wow. I was about seven months at this point, with about eight weeks left to go. Lara was due at the end of November, so she must have been a month early.
Then I read the caption.
It is with the heaviest of hearts that J and I announce our beautiful girl was born sleeping on 11/11, a month and a day before she was due to enter the world. We snuggled and loved our perfect 6lb 9oz baby girl and she was given every good wish that has been sent her way by so many people that love her.
We are just starting to comprehend, grieve and heal, in every sense. The outpouring of love from our friends and family has been incredible, and we thank you from the bottom of our broken hearts. Keep sending that good energy our way - we are going to need it in the days to come.
Oh fuck. Oh god. I started crying again. All my problems, which were ultimately just a logistical way of exiting an abusive relationship in a safe way, sank into obscurity faced with the weight of this. They were going to be such great parents. Why did they lose their baby, and me, facing all this stress and pain and forcing fatherhood on a guy who hated me, why did I get to keep mine?
I immediately emailed them both, and then drove home. I entered the house. J was on the computer. I told him the news. I remember his shocked look, the concern, the sadness, the start as I realized oh god, he has a heart. He has a fucking heart. Just not for me. I pulled out my three wheeler bike, filled a cooler with craft beer and cigarettes, and cycled over to Lara and Jon’s Venice Beach apartment. Their porch was filled with gifts and food and love for weeks as they navigated this loss. Eventually, they would take this loss, take the love, and use it to build a business called Giving Love (“of course they had to turn something free into a capitalist venture,” J snarled).
A few weeks later, Lara and Jon asked if we wanted to have dinner on the boardwalk with them. I was touched by the invitation. I’d assumed no one wanted to be around the toxic, fucked up pregnant couple from birthing class at any time, but particularly during the loss of their child. I dragged J along, grateful that he would finally have a Dad friend, hopeful that Jon would be a good influence on him.
We met at a restaurant on the boardwalk. Lara was pale and quiet, but hugged me for a long time. We ordered spicy Thai mussels and talked about her daughter. “I would love to meet N when he’s born,” Lara said. “It would help.” It turned out I was the only one who knew - Jon had carefully hidden the announcement from everyone in the birthing class, concerned not to let their tragedy affect us, but had forgotten to include me. I was probably the only person going through something so terrifying and monumental that their pain did not scare me, and I did not think their loss infectious. I let Lara give my unborn baby all the love we both needed in that moment.
I’m still in touch with Jon and Lara. Last year I drove up to their home in Washington with N and spent two weeks in their huge log cabin while they traveled to see family. I cried in relief when we pulled up in their driveway because the rubber band I always felt squeezing and squeezing and squeezing in LA, disappeared. The voices in my head - you’re crazy, you’re a loser, you fucked up, you have no friends, you’re unlovable, you’re not fit to be a mom - they disappeared the further I got away from LA. N rode bikes around the block with the neighborhood kids. We spent July 4 at a block party in the port, fireworks and bouncy castles and tacos and lemonade. I grilled every single day, taking painstaking care to marinade meats and dress salads and delight in the joy of feeding my son properly, something I hadn’t done since he was a toddler. These days it’s all pasta and whatever I can prep in fifteen minutes. I read a book a day. N played basketball and watered the garden and played video games and claimed the basement as his territory. I could not stop reading. These pockets of beauty - a home opened, a seat at the table, an invite into a functional, warm family full of love - they are what keep me going. Most of my friends have left LA now, and I have not replaced them. As time goes on I find myself clamping shut about what has happened to me, and what continues to happen. I’ve been too burned by friends walking away, by friends deciding vigilantly to ‘not take sides’, or by friends taking a side which is, inevitably, not mine. I am the crazy one. The emotional one. The stressed one. He on contrast is calm, measured, confident. If I explain to people I am not here by choice, their faces cloud over. You’re an adult, get over it. It’s not that bad. It’s so lonely. My friends are still present to send me a voice note, a text, answer my call, let me cry. But the lack of physical proximity, the failure to just have a fucking kitchen table to sit at, to drink tea, to laugh, to cry, to bitch next to someone who knows me as me, not this ‘problem’ that the court system has made me - it kills me. I am not the person I was back in 2011, 2012, even 2013. The trauma has done things to me. It’s transformed me from the inside out, warping my cells like cancer. It was never easy to be me, but I enjoyed life. I had friends. I fucked up and learned from shit and moved on. Until suddenly I could not.
Who knew things were unraveling? My emergency contacts, Lara and Jon, my saviors. My neighbor, Lisa. My therapist. My family. My midwife. My doula. Violet. Greg.
It was probably around April, when, while changing N’s diaper one morning, I absently reached out and grabbed the nearest coffee cup. I took a deep swig. I spluttered. It was filled with whiskey. It was 8am.
Oh fuck.
I was doing pretty much everything alone, but I needed help. I’d try and last until morning, then hand N over to J after an endless night of cluster feeds. But sometimes I would walk into the living room at 7am and find J asleep on the sofa, ice cream dribbling down his chest, the front door wide open, my (prescribed) Xanax pills inexplicably scattered on the floor. He was still recording me on his phone - videos, voice notes, monitoring my emails, going through my texts and voicemails - that had gotten worse. Every simple exchange seemed to spiral into a maddening, circular, eternal argument that had no resolution as it kept changing focus in an instant. I’d ask J if he’d put more money in the joint bank account. He would respond by accusing me of being obsessed with material commodities. He would say I had deliberately ruined his life by making him have a baby he didn’t want. He would say that he’d never wanted to move into an apartment therefore I should pay all the bills as he was perfectly happy living in a van. I should be subverting capitalism by paying him for his emotional labor, not to mention the two hours in the morning when I handed N over to him which proved I could not cope, I was failing as a mother, and I needed to pay him to watch N and if he didn’t have to work or pay bills he could watch N for free, and… I would watch in horror as these arguments spiraled. I would catch the drift of one point, respond to it, and suddenly we would be onto something else. I would eventually just beg him to stop. Please stop. Please, J. Please just let it go. Just leave. I need a moment. Just get out of the house, please. Please, please, please. Just fucking leave.
You’re the one who brought it up. You’re the one who wanted a baby. You’re the one who wanted the apartment. You’re the one who wanted me to go back to work.
These arguments terrified me. They would devolve in seconds. J would refuse to give it up, refuse to stop, refuse to walk away, refuse to leave. I would go into the bedroom with N, lock the door. He would stand outside the door, still arguing. He never raised his voice. He never screamed. Just kept talking in the same low, controlled voice which mimicked his ‘real’ voice. The screaming - that was me. It was all me.
When the neighbors called the cops, J would smoothly tell them it was just an argument. She has a temper, officers. She’s been depressed after the baby. She’s finding it hard to cope.
I’m worried about her.
By August 30, 2014 N is nine months and five days old. He can sit up, but he can’t walk yet. He can talk - I can’t remember his first word because one day he was silent, and the next sentences came out, and he would look at me, smiling, amused by my astonishment. He is a chubby, happy baby, a beautiful baby. Not all babies are beautiful, but he is. He’s needy. He’s hungry. He wants to be so close to me that sometimes I think he wants to be back inside me. But even with all that’s going on he’s smart, unbelievably smart. Loving. J makes him laugh, but it is me he turns to when he’s hurt, or bewildered, or tired, or hungry. I am the center of his world. Me, my chihuahua, Mr Chips, N. We are a little team, and we stick close together, always wary of the outlier in our midst who we can’t predict. He can be loving, he can be kind, he can be smart, he can be intelligent. But mostly, he is cruel. He has hit me before, but I am not afraid of the physical pain. I am afraid that he is right about me. I am afraid that he is not right about me, which means there is something very wrong. I am afraid that he is controlling me, and monitoring me, and spending all the money I bring in, and refusing to pay for anything in this life we have made.
I am afraid to be alone with J. Now he is back in work and isn’t in the house all the time it’s easier. When he is home, I invite people round because he is - usually - better behaved in front of other people. This time I invite my activist friends. Barak, Andy, Lily, Joe, for a barbecue. J and I had met at Occupy, had evolved into grassroots organizers working with groups on Skid Row campaigning for the unhoused population. It had been our every waking moment until N came along. We had even lived in a group house with a polyamorous family and radical collective, sharing bills and groceries and community meetings and books - and drugs. It was one reason I forced J to move out of there. The group firmly believed in decriminalizing drugs, in normalizing responsible drug use. I believed it, at first, but then I saw J start to warp and blister, like he’d gotten too close to the flame, and we argued and argued until I won, and we moved to our own home in Venice. Our radical friends slipped away because I had turned conventional and boring. Motherhood seemed incompatible with fighting against Systemic Inequality, speaking truth to power. I had encouraged J to continue organizing even as I found I had to stop with the demands of working and parenting. He had been reluctant. Insisted there was no point. By inviting our old friends around, I was trying to bring them back into our life, give J the fire and brimstone, the community and the fight, the hope and the optimism he’d had when I first met him.
The night was unremarkable. I remember it was hard to talk to people. I had gone from screaming revolution, from forcing the world upside down, to desperately drowning as I attempted to keep it upright for one more day. I think I came across as tired, uptight, withdrawn, remote, uninterested. At different times in our life, we find our people. Right now, these were not my people. I needed moms and grandmas and people who paid the rent on time and did not give a fuck about changing anything apart from a diaper. I refuse to apologize for that. The BBQ chugged out smoke into Lisa’s apartment, and she kindly closed the window and did not complain about either the smell or the drunken crew of unhoused activists chowing down on Trader Joe’s steaks.
After our friends left around 8pm, I cleaned up, put N to bed. At around 9pm, J, who was slightly drunk and prowling around anxiously, said he was popping out to the store to get something. He’d be ten minutes.
9pm. 10pm. 11pm.
At midnight I put the deadbolt on the front door so he could not enter without waking me.
When he came back at 2am, wasted and incoherent, with tales of some kind of police arrest, I asked him to take a drug test. I had many, from a year earlier when I had found the meth in the bathroom.
“I’m not taking that fucking test,”
“I’m not letting you in until you do,”
“If you don’t let me in, this marriage is over.”
“Then take the test,”
“Where am I going to fucking sleep?”
“Take the test and you can sleep here,”
“I’m not taking that fucking test. It’s an insult. You need to trust me.”
“Goodnight J. We’ll talk tomorrow”
I went to bed.
I did what I should have done eighteen months earlier. I put down a boundary, and I kept to it.
J moves into my van. He is back in the house every morning at 8am to shower, eat, make coffee, play with N, read my emails, tell me I’m stealing his child, ruining his life, it’s all my fault.
Within days of moving into the van, which he parks outside the front door, he is demanding physical and legal custody of N. Bewildered, Violet and Greg try to mediate between us.
“He says you are threatening to cut him out of N’s life",”
“I never said that. I said he needs to get help, get sober and that things can’t continue like this. I want change.”
“But what if he doesn’t want to change?”
“He’s agreed to go to therapy. He has an appointment tomorrow.”
The therapist I had found for him, the therapist I was paying for, spoke to me afterwards.
“There’s no point wasting your money. He doesn’t want to do the work. He’s too angry.”
OK, I say slowly, and hang up. N is on the floor, playing with plastic crap. Mr Chips is nestled in my lap.
J arrives, snarling.
“I have a proposal. I’m going to move into the spare room - “
“You mean my office?”
“Yes. We can raise N together without having to be a couple.”
“But you haven’t been paying rent for over a year…?”
“I need somewhere to stay.”
“But what about us? What about working on us? Getting sober? Trying to make our marriage work?”
No answer.
Greg arrives.
“He’s decided he doesn’t want to make your marriage work.”
“Oh, OK.” I say.
“He wants you to sign legal papers giving him custody of N.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“I’m just passing the message on.”
My friend Claire, who had left Venice Beach a year before to give birth to her baby in New Zealand, invites me to a week-long retreat in Fiji.
“I’ll pay for everything. You and N can be my guests. I think it will be good for you to step away from this situation. You need some breathing room.”
J refuses, point blank. “You are not taking my fuckin’ child”
“It’s for a week -”
“You’re threatening to abduct my child. Who knows if you’ll come back?”
I try to placate him. Gregg and Violet watch from a wary distance. Again we have become the problem couple. The news quickly spreads and the circle of new moms I hang out with express their sympathy. I continue with the family playdates, even bringing J along. He is better when he is around other people. We are at a playpark in Santa Monica. I bring coffee and bagels. The dynamic between us all has changed. I am no longer one of them. I am not a new mom with an adorable baby and a whole life spreading out before me. I am in the process of a messy break up, and yet I invited my husband, who hates me, to this playdate so he can look sad and say he tried when he did not.
I do not go to Fiji because I am scared of what he might do. So I stay.
I find a lawyer. I show him the emails from J, demanding I sign legal papers. I show him what I have offered him, what he has rejected. The lawyer is on a flat fee, so he has no vested interest in dragging the litigation out. “This man will not mediate,” he says. “We have to go to court.”
On September 30, 2014, I file for legal separation. I didn’t ask for divorce as I was still hopeful there might be some way to fix this mess.
Email dated 7 October 2014 from me to J
We can agree on a settlement but it will not give you legal custody of N until I have seen you address your anger and other issues and commit to sobriety. You’re scaring me. I think you need to stay away from all alcohol and drugs for good. I really do.
We can talk about a settlement but I cannot entrust you with physical and legal custody right now. You need monitoring and you need to be held accountable because if I do it you hate me and resent me. Right now you are desperate for me to give you custody so you can do whatever you want with impunity. That frightens me.
Email dated 7 October 2014 from J to me
Pull the papers or you’re leaving me no choice. I won’t let you make all his medical and school and travel decisions without me. I’m not asking for anything I don’t already do until he is weaned. I want to see him every day for a substantial time, be able to make joint decisions and that’s it. If you push this, we will both be doing random tests (how’s that xanax thing going), CPS is likely to be involved and we’ll waste N’s college fund you wanted so bad.
I’m seeing the lawyer at 130 tomorrow, once that happens it’s out of my hands. I’m not going to pay the lawyer my mom’s retirement money to not liberal visitation with my son. I won’t make anything up, but I will show all your lies about me regarding abuse and why the cops were called to our house multiple times to be the lies they are. I have witnesses regarding every call here and I have your blog showing that you are actually the one prone to violence.
Email dated 7 October 2014 from Violet to me
Hello R,
I don't understand why J thinks that you are lying about his abuse? Yes, there are always two or more sides to a story, but drinking a WHOLE bottle of Whiskey and having your pregnant wife wait in the desert is just not acceptable. We all know J has an amazing sweet, intelligent side, and I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but seems to me like his mom enabled him wayyy too much... maybe to makeup for the lack of having a dad, etc, and he expects you to do the same? My goodness, he is paying his lawyer fees with mom's retirement, what?
Anyhow, sorry about my rant. I will keep my fingers crossed for you guys. I really want you guys to be able to sort this out as painless and quickly as possible. xx
Email dated 7 October 2014 from me to Violet
I have a feeling I am gonna have to chase him all the way to court. He's in way too much denial. He's trying to avoid court because he wants 50/50 physical custody of Nye as soon as he turns two, and he wants to take Nye away on his own without me.... but he doesn't want to see a shrink, or quit drinking / smoking to do this. He's trying to have it both ways. Court is gonna be hell, but it might be the lesson he needs. He thinks he is 'entitled' to Nye, doesn't seem to understand being a Dad is not just playing with him, but keeping him safe and being a role model too. Many lessons to learn. I have to learn to stay present, not snap, pay more attention, put my phone down... many things too. It's not just him. His, sadly, are pretty big lessons though..... not sure he's gonna get them... I wonder if the delusion is mental illness or stupidity? It's weird isn't it? It really does not make sense. But neither does his Mom. I mean, I called her last year in tears after I found drugs in my bathroom and she texted me by mistake saying "God, R is just as bad as J, she keeps texting me, i don't know what to say to her". Umm, how about "I'm sorry my son is making your pregnancy hell?". Now I've been asking her for help with J and she acts like this is a marital tiff and I have a personality problem, and poor J just wanted to be a Stay at home Dad, but evil wifey wouldn't go back to work and support him. She's crazy! As crazy as him!
Email dated 16 October 2014 from me to J
J, I asked you to leave the house because I really, really needed to have some space and clarity and I was extremely worried you had relapsed. You were drinking every day, had started smoking again, were depressed and moody and angry, and smelled strange. I felt our relationship was becoming increasingly frightening and volatile and headed towards the dark place we were in last year. I know that I have work to do on myself, but I also know that it doesn't matter if I do work - if you don't, nothing will change. Something had to change. The rages, the eye rollings, the lack of intimacy, the recording conversations, reading my computer, pointed comments about me divorcing you, shying away from my touch, your evident lack of interest in me, hiding drinks in take out cups, secret smoking, potential drug use, my weakness after the birth, my stress from not being able to work properly and feeling like I was being overwhelmed by tasks I had assigned you, was very punishing on you.... something was seriously wrong and whenever I brought it up, it was pushed aside as too painful to talk about. When I asked you to leave it was my way of saying: Enough. Deal with this. Or we can't be together.
You had a choice: to choose to look at your part AND allow me the space to look at mine, or to end this. You chose to end it and within days were barraging me with talks of divorce, lawyers, mediation (who came up with that idea? Lisa?). You overwhelmed me, and you were pissed. Suddenly you were screaming about visitations and access and custody and all kinds of shit. I just wanted space and time to regroup and address very serious issues in a serious way. I wanted to go to Fiji to chill out and breathe and miss you. I had no intention of denying you access to N UNLESS you went completely crazy again like you did last year when I felt physically threatened and needed to protect him and myself. But you were angry, and you wanted to hurt me and make me hurt as much as you were doing.
It made me so scared you keep saying "I told you if you ever told me to leave I would divorce you". You gave me an option of staying in an absolutely intolerable relationship, or divorce. My plan was always to address these issues and try and keep our marriage together.
Your talk of lawyers and custody and mediation forced me to hire a lawyer. I did so to protect myself and protect N, because you did not once acknowledge that I had valid fears about rage and abuse that needed addressing, and I did not want to walk into a strange room with an "impartial" lawyer and sign a paper about the most precious thing on earth to me: my family.
After talking to Violet and talking to you, we can agree on many things … I do not see any reason to sign our lives into legal papers before we have made a massive effort to get our issues sorted:
1. Visitation (with flexibility to accommodate our changing schedules and N breastfeeding)
2. Rotational Holidays with our separate families (I will accompany N on these and stay in sublets at my own expense so he is not unhappy without me)
3. Overnights - once you have agreed to drug and alcohol testing, and hopefully a treatment program such as AA, and are continuing to seek treatment for ADHD in a facility such as UCLA's clinic, you can and should be spending nights with N as long as I am present to ensure his safety. I'm happy for you to come to the house and sleep with him in the main bedroom and I will stay in the small office with a monitor next to me.
I will have sole physical custody of N until you have proven you are responsible enough to address the issues which made me ask you to leave for our safety, and until N is an appropriate age to spend nights away from me. You have to prove you are serious about addressing and resolving your issues - anger, self-medication with drugs and alcohol, low self esteem etc - before I can even contemplate you taking N for long periods and nighttimes without supervision. I do not want this age to be put into any paper but to be decided between us at a later date, and contingent upon your not relapsing on drugs or anything else. I will not deny you overnights on condition you are working on yourself, but I will not let N be hurt and taken away from me before he is ready for extended periods of time. It is impossible to know what this time is right now. Particularly I find your plans to take him to New York to see his family without me troublesome. He finds the dearth of new people overwhelming and frightening, it is evident. He needs me, particularly as your commitment to your health is new and uncertain and frankly, contingent only upon monitoring by justice right now.
Legal custody will be joint, contingent upon your continued commitment to EITHER complete sobriety or agreed upon limitations (drinking only once or twice a week and absolutely no drugs, ever) and contingent upon your continued sessions with a therapist and with a psychiatrist.
I will be allowed to travel abroad with N for work and / or family, on condition that I make every effort to try and bring you with me, and if this is not possible, keep my trips away to the absolute minimum (ie no two month long trips to australia just to go surfing unless you allow me to do so in good grace)
This is what I want, J. Of course I want language in the agreement which guarantees that behavior must be appropriate at all times, and no mentally or verbally abusive behavior - anything which upsets or triggers me - is not acceptable at any time, and that if such behavior takes place it will be within my rights to terminate any visitations or request a half hour time out where you leave until it has cooled down. Of course disagreements are inevitable between us, and squabbles will happen. There is a host of difference between a disagreement and a verbally abusive mode of behavior which cannot and should not happen in the house during visitations.
I do not think we can agree on these things, and so I am going to court. Let me know if I'm wrong. We can air all this at the mediation appointment but I wanted to let you know where I stand in this regards. It will be very easy for me to provide evidence to the courts of your drug use and so I think any agreement reached during mediation or afterwards will inevitably demand some kind of evidence of treatment on your part.
