Another Christmas in court. This will be six. Our daughter is 5 1/2 years old. She sees her dad every other weekend and half the holidays. I don't object.
She hates it and cries all the time. He was violent to me in our marriage. I would be dead if I'd stayed with him. I have never ever withheld contact, turned up late, told him she's ill when she's not etc. I still send her all the time.
Why then, have I been in court since she was five months old? My solicitor says it's because there is an ongoing dispute. Of course there is. Every time something is agreed/ ordered, I do it and my ex husband objects to it after a few months and makes another application so we go back to court and the whole pointless circus starts again.
There is not a single person now who has any doubt that our lovely daughter is being used as a stick to beat me with and this nasty piece of work only uses the court to continue his abuse.
Why do I have to take time off work to go to court/ doctors/ solicitors/ CAFCASS? Should I be living on benefits so I have time to help all these people make their money? Should I be spending money on this or should my daughter benefit? When is this nightmare going to end?
I keep being told it's when our daughter is old enough to reject her father for herself. Lovely. What a choice to abdicate to the conscience of a child who is surrounded by adults whose job it is, paid or unpaid, to take care of her. If they and we can't decide, how can she possibly do it? Why should she? Why does it have to be extreme?
I now sincerely wish I was dead and that my daughter was in care. Our lives are not worth living thanks to an abusive, violent ex husband and the stupid self-serving court and solicitors that sit there on their useless backsides making money out of children and vulnerable people.
If one more of them and their horrible kind tell me that his continued abuse, my daughter's nightly tears and my own devastated health are in her best interest, I am going to scream and hit someone.
There. I've said it.