Today there is no song in my heart. No poem on my lips. Some days are without warmth. That needed hug feels miles away. The weight of it all is crushing. When dreams turn to darkness. All I ever wanted was love and family.
Maybe its the gray skies. Maybe its the week of little or no sleep.
Maybe its the sweet 6 year old girl who I miss dearly.
It all started in June 2006. I had just closed a cold and painful chapter of life. The Divorce was final. But a war was brewing and I didn’t know it. Sometimes that war seems never ending. The casualties…
Somebody new dropped into my life. They were different. There was something special, or so it seemed. We dated a year and were married November of 2007. Things were great. Six months later, we found out that my former spouse and her boyfriend had been sexually abusing my little girl for the previous two years. Devastation. Chaos.
Two years of brutal reality: court, Guardian ad litem, DA prosecutors. It was constant, raw and horrible. The worst part of it was the toll it took on the victim. Her guilt for telling on her mom. Her Maternal Grandmother pressuring her to say it all wasn’t true. I’m sure it didn’t help her when I came apart, weeping and feeling lost.
How could I have failed so completely to protect my children?
Years later, I got over that feeling. The realization that I had done everything I could.
With that war behind me, I thought I would be headed to better times. Happiness and contentment eluded me. Why? There was still a lot of poison in my home. I see what happened but it doesn’t mean I understand it at all.
My advise is this. Don’t dwell on the negative. Don’t wallow in the misery of the past – whether you created it or not. Don’t justify anger or hate.
My wife began to fear the children I brought with me from my first marriage. They were somehow broken and it was her responsibility to fix them. Or at least thats what she expressed to me for four years. How someone else’s destruction was heaped on her to fix. But instead of shunning that poison, it is as if she ingested it. Wallowed in it until it seeped into her skin. She turned dark. Fear lead to anger. Anger lead to hate. Hate lead to suffering.
…and I watched it all happen. I begged and pleaded. I hoped and wished. I prayed.
Kids began to suffer.
After five years, I divorced again. Years of family counseling and therapy down the drain. The little girl we had together was stripped from me. I was a single Dad with three little kids full time on my own and my fourth – she was only two at the time – was all but lost to me.
Then the X moved out of state. I fought: courts, attorneys I couldn’t afford and a lot of tears. Now I see my little one for a week at a time every few months. She weeps the day she leaves. She begs me to change it so she sees me more. I’m compelled to bite my tongue. One day I can tell her. She can know the truth. Her Mother ate the poison of the child abuser who went to jail. With every hateful remark about their birth mother, she justified and internalized that same hate. The results were devastating.
DCFS says it doesn’t matter. I divorced and the kids are safe…as if that’s that.
A week ago I sent my precious daughter back to her Mother. Last night when I said goodbye she wept and begged me to change it so she can spend more time with me. Today my skies are gray and my heart is broken.
I’m grateful my troubles aren’t worse. I know there are those who would trade my troubles for theirs. Am I not allowed my sorrows? For complete disclosure, this is just one of the sorrows weighing on me. If this was all there was, I’d probably be fine.
All I ever wanted was love and family. Sometimes that war seems never ending.
Today I’m crying it all out. Thanks for listening.
Robert D Pemberton 
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