I am onit, hear me ROAR (occasionally)

[onitlikeacarbonnet]

Thread no.5

Hope you all find me or I’ll just be talking to myself.

That sounds perfect, no bile, no vindicatif outbursts, just what is best for DC. Keep on keeping on Onit, we are all behind you.
Then in a week hopefully you can relax

Wow onit I am so impressed with how well you handled the reporter and his questions (not that I expected anything less) and I'm sure it really shone through how much this is for your DC and not you. Now for a and good luck for next week.

Did someone say gin?
On a school night?
I probably shouldn’t but I’m going to anyway.
Cheers

Cheers !

Well done, Onit, it sounds like you handled that very well.

Enjoy your gin, you deserve it. Don't worry about letting some plates smash, you do need to pick your battles.

I bet it will be a relief when this is over, regardless of the outcome.

I am so sorry about the stress that you are being put through. You don't deserve it and you are fantastic mum.

The fact you are able to say something even slightly positive about OW after all lcb and her have put you through shows how much grace and compassion you have.

Keeping it all crossed for you onit.
I know how bloody stressful you must be finding this and it all so arbitrary really-based on who gave what impression in one slice of time to the reporter. But you have right on your side so I'm hoping they will see sense.
And I hope you are ok.

I’m here and I’m reading. Just flipping between feeling flat and feeling so agitated I can’t sit still or focus. On the phone to the bf last night and I don’t know how he didn’t lose it with me; he must’ve repeated himself a thousand times because I was so zoned out.

I said there’s been another incident.
I’m not sure I mentioned 2 of his weekends ago he’d asked to collect the dc 15 minutes early and I’d suggested he’d save time because he could pick up from their play date which was closer to the motorway. I did not agree to the early pick up but he obviously took my helpfulness to mean agreement and came early for them. I wasn’t in the mood for a day of arguing so I let it go.
Last Friday morning early I got a text. I’d say asking but there was no please. Not even a question mark. He wanted to pick the dc up early again so he could leave the baby in nursery.
I’m so angry and stressed anyway, I spent ages writing a ranty reply.
I edited it down to incredulity.
A couple of sentences. You’re really asking another favour after everything that you’ve said and done. 5pm is the agreed time.
His reply elaborated in an attempt to manipulate. But not before picking holes in my words. He didn’t understand what favour he was asking when it was only to avoid the dc having a longer trip if the baby needed feeding nor how it was another one.
He said he knew I was at home and those few minutes would not cause me inconvenience.
I replied saying I understood his original text and, as he’d given me no further reason to agree, I wouldn’t change my mind.
This obviously riled him as he accused me of being inflexible and said he was astounded and disappointed (yet again) by my inability to adapt for the dcs sake.
I responded that he’d asked a favour with very little notice. He had not shown any benefit to me or the dc to compel me to grant him a favour.
I explained that I regularly change our plans to make allowances for him as I did a fortnight before, reluctantly, and in order to avoid this type of harassment if I disagree.
Adding that he has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to take no for an answer.
I asked why he can’t accept that I make plans for the dc till the agreed pick up time.
I added that he’d had at least 2 weeks to fix this issue with the baby and the normal solution would be to ask his friends and family.
I’m quite proud of myself as I feel that I said a lot without giving too much of myself away.
I believe he was hoping that he’d rattled me and I’d say something which he could use to show my unreasonableness or worse in court on Monday.
In the end I think his last reply is damning.

When will we be able to converse like two normal adults? I started this conversation today with what I thought was an innocent request. Had you said no with a reason I would have accepted that without issue. However, your response seemed to be filled with vitriol and hatred, which immediately made me defensive. You say that this felt like harassment. I don't agree but what you are perceiving as such could all have been avoided if you had just responded civilly in the first place.

I’ve more or less cut and pasted his last reply. I changed a few words but only to avoid it being searchable. It is essentially verbatim.

I didn’t reply.

He initiated another conversation over the weekend regarding ds and an incident at school. There were a couple of replies back and forth with no issues however I’ve previously noticed that he is inclined to send emails post 11pm, the last half dozen or so have been sent at 1.30am, 3am, 4am.

I added a request to my last reply that if his messages aren’t urgent to not send them in the middle of the night.

Petty maybe. But not unreasonable.

You've stopped so much of his controlling behaviour that he now has very few ideas of what to do to control you, left. Credit to you. I think your reply was spot on. Of course he's going to argue otherwise until he's blue in the face because he can't accept that he's difficult, and he continues to need to belittle and control you.

I would like to see you get to the stage where you can just dismiss his requests, dramas, pathetic responses, and ignore. To not let him rile you so that you need to write out a lengthy, ranty reply, even though you had the good sense to edit it . A simply 'no, that's not convenient, they'll see you at the agreed time' would suffice, then put it out of your mind and ignore any further attempts at engagement from him.

Onit I think it’s obvious that with this guy you really cannot do anything apart from sticking to the rules even when it would be no skin off your nose not to. You give an inch. He takes a mile. I think you have to accept that even if it works out for you to change timings or where pick ups are done etc you just can’t. This isn’t the first time he’s done this, he did something similar recently, and the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.

I think you’re going to have to be rigid when it comes to arrangements regardless of anything else.

I agree Agatha. That’s where I want to be too.
My counsellor is helping me get there and I will enrol on the freedom programme after this court thing is done.
The most difficult thing to let go of is my need to have him admit what he’s done. And apologise.
And (and I’m ashamed to admit this but) I need him to give me some acknowledgment of his behaviour. Some recognition of what that did to me. Some praise.
I know that’s the abuse. Because I get acknowledgement and recognition from plenty of people. But his denial or refusal makes it feel empty. How can my hard work and effort be recognised if he denies the need for that effort.
I’m so ashamed that it’s 2 and a half years later and I still can’t get away from that. I know I’m fucked up.
I still fantasise about telling his parents. His sister. The world. Smacking him in the face with the unrefutable truth of what he did and said. Smacking him in the face literally. And her. I really, really, REALLY want to punch that bitch in the throat!
The anger scares me not because I think I’ll do anything but because it’s never dissipated. I don’t feel it as often as before but when it surfaces it is as strong as it ever was.
At times it’s barely controllable.

I don’t think you will ever get any kind of apology from him as in his mind he is the all-important superman who is never wrong.

You can keep doing as you’re doing to reduce the feelings you get when he tries to elicit a reaction from you. Just blandly bat back his requests as he tries to chip away. It is all a control thing as has been said.

Presumably he is up late doing emails as he is catching up on work to make up for all the time he spends driving all his children including the baby here and there.

All that burning the midnight oil will make him look older and greyer in no time.

As they say the opposite of love is indifference not hate, the rage will go and you’ll be thinking “what a sad selfish wanker who messed up my and my children’s lives.

I'm still very very angry at the woman in my situation onit. No amount of counselling has taken that away. I wish it would...I don't like feeling like it at all. The issue is that it will never have any resolution for me. As long as she is with the father of my children she will also be a presence in my life. It just seems very unfair. Which is the same for you too.
And I concur on the wanting an apology as well. I will never get one from either of them because that would mean then having to admit to being the shitbags they are and neither of their egos will allow that.
I was thinking that by now I would have learned to switch this off and I have made some small progress. Keep going onit.

I know I’m fucked up.

I doubt you are. I think it’s just being human and having to live a great injustice. The reality is however that you’ll probably never get what you want from him because he’s seriously screwed up and not actually capable of giving it. Not that I can still actually believe how screwed up mine is. It’s still stark disbelief on so many levels, the things he did and still does, they're so bad you can’t actually believe it even though you know he has a serious personality disorder.

To be honest I just keep it in my head now that he’s sick and that’s it. It helps. Could you do the same?

The most difficult thing to let go of is my need to have him admit what he’s done. And apologise. And (and I’m ashamed to admit this but) I need him to give me some acknowledgment of his behaviour. Some recognition of what that did to me. Some praise - He is never, ever, ever going to do that. No apology. No acknowledgement. No praise. No admission. Never.
He's incapable of seeing the real situation through anyone elses eyes but his own. He's like a small child, totally focussed on himself and his situation. Poking to get attention and reaction. No amount of wishing for it on your part, or anger, will ever change that. Imagine him as a toddler in full tantrum mode - stamping his feet, red in the face, uncontrollable rage, literally spitting at the injustice that he can't get his own way. Not a pretty sight .

You're really not fucked up. You've done so well moving on from his trail of destruction, and it's not surprising that there are elements of what happened that you can't let go of yet.

In time, you will come out ahead of him. When your children are older and realise fully what he did and what he continued to do. They will make their own minds up then. And by that time he won't have that hold on you any more because he will communicate with them directly. As has been said, indifference is the goal, but I know that you know that already.

I can't help smiling that he is up at 3am.... clearly this is not the love nest he imagined !

Made me smile too Mix. I imagine him to be a tightly wound type, agitated and unable to sleep, so getting up at stupid o'clock to write emails to bother onit with. Not the sign of a happy chappy!

You are not fucked up. You are acting and feeling perfectly normally to an abnormal situation.

I’m like a cat in a hot tin roof. Court is on Monday and the reporter hasn’t produced the report yet.
I haven’t contacted my lawyer because aside from costing me money for him to reply, all he’s going to say is what I already know; when he hasn’t, I’ll have it.

But I’m so jumpy. I made a silly mistake at work yesterday. In front of the big boss. I am letting my personal care slip. Realise in the middle of the day I haven’t brushed my teeth or my hair .
The dc have been short of uniform this week because I’ve let the laundry slip.
It’s like I’m so agitated I’m not moving at all.

I need to ask my sister to go with me on Monday. I had thought I’d be ok by myself but I’m not sure now. I’m not even coping with simple decisions.
It was my birthday yesterday and I got the dc back a little early so they could spend a bit of time with me. The bf took the afternoon off work and came to see me for a few hours and we all had cake followed by a chippy tea. Normally I’d organise something for us to do together, a board game even but I just let them go on screens and if anything they were annoying me. So hyper and loud. And I spent a fair bit of time crying. Not in front of the dc but still. The bf must think I’m deranged.
The dc gave me my present in the morning. They’d made cards and lcb had taken them to buy a gift. A dvd which we’ll watch this weekend. I’d made a point of telling them that I wanted them to choose my present as Mother’s Day has been a gift and card that lcb had chosen alone and the dc said it wasn’t what they’d wanted to give me.
I ended up taking them to the shops myself so they could chose.
They’ve said they want to do the same for my birthday so we’ll do that this weekend.

I’ll keep you posted when/if the report comes through.

I need gin.

No, you don't need gin now ! you need to calm down.
Make a list of important things to do & work through the list.
Remember you have done everything you could possibly do.
Making yourself demented with worry is not helping.
At this stage, what will be will be Onit.
Yes it may not be what you want to hear, but sadly its the stark reality.
So go & brush your teeth, & keep busy it will help keep your mind off the reporter.

Went to school assembly.
Have a working hoover thanks to the bf so I will do that.
I’ve sent a text to my friends asking if anyone is free today or the weekend. My dc deserve more than being stuck with me and my mood. Or they’ll spend the next 3 days going square eyed and eating Halloween sweets instead of actual food.

And I will stay off the gin until the dc are in bed. I haven’t had a drink all week.
I woke up this morning and couldn’t remember how I got there. Still can’t. Not a good idea to throw alcohol at that.

Just had an email from my lawyers office saying the report will not be ready today. It will be sent direct from the reporter over the weekend and I can discuss it with my lawyer prior to the hearing on Monday morning.
I’ve got no idea how I’ll get through the weekend with this hanging over me.
The only positive is that lcb will be furious.

I have been recommended a Bach remedy which is meant to help when decision making is tricky. If you'd like it let me know.

Would it help to make a list of what you need to do each day to keep on top of things? I have set days for doing certain jobs to make sure I don't forget to do them.

I usually write a list. And have one on the go for this week. I’ve at least done some things because I was more organised at the beginning of the week.
Dc are entertaining themselves and I’m trying to relax.
I will need to sort something for tea but until then the dc are fine on their own.
I might go for a bath even.

How are you Onit? It is so stressful before and after a hearing, I feel your pain! I am also letting a lot of things slip. I keep putting my phone in silly places, and I was crying yesterday because the small task of finding a pair of socks for DD was impossible and overwhelming.

Be kind to yourself. This is a horrible thing to go through, and it's normal to struggle, who wouldn't? Do the bare minimum of tasks and don't feel bad about that. I know it's hard to remember self care and us mums are so used to putting ourselves last, please bear in mind how important that is, even if it's something very mundane don't forget to do one nice thing for yourself a day at least.

Hugs, Onit, I will be thinking of you Monday.

I’m ok.
It’s been tough due to some difficulties with ds. Bullying at school has affected his behaviour at home towards his sister.
Had a chance to speak to him today and he’s so upset. And frightened.
My sensitive little boy was sobbing his heart out and all I could do was hug him and cry with him.
I did manage to pull myself together enough to actually attempt parenting him and he appeared happier after we spoke about it but I am not a good parent right now. My dc deserve better than me.
I have told them I’m very stressed. And they know I have court on Monday.
I feel awful that I’ve been (hopefully only benignly) neglectful the last week at least and, at times, over the last few months.
I keep telling myself I’ll be a better mum when this is all over. But it feels like it’s never going to be over.