While cleaning up around the house I realized that all of our gift cards were gone. All those little stocking stuffer VISA cards that family send you when they can’t think up anything else to send. All of them, just gone. Even the ones to me for my birthday from my mother. I just don’t understand…

If that wasn’t enough for the day, my mother called, and we talked, and rehashed, and went over and discussed the same old misserable topic which was my life. She talked about a conversation she had with our oldest after all this started. According to my mother, my oldest stated that my youngest not graduating wasn’t a big deal. That this was their choice and that they could still move forward with just a GED.

The unending silence is deadening. I have tried to contact our children and our friends whom live in the area, anyone. It seems my spouse has chosen to try to turn as many people against me as possible.

As I stood in the silence of our home, staring at the empty walls, I broke down and cried yet again. I am brought to wonder if it will ever get easier, or if this is all there will be.

I had been putting off contacting some of our mutual friends. I had no idea whom all my spouse may have talked to, or what they may of told anyone. Though past experiences with this situation lead me to expect that most people tend to pass judgement first, and care little for justice. Further more, once all the details come to light, which they always do in the end, those people whom passed judgement will find themselves in an awkward situation. This tends to lead to them to distancing themselves from both my spouse and I. I can only guess at the exact reasons, but I suppose there is some level of embarrassment that ends up associated with it all. Over the years we have had similar situations, though never this extreme, and over the years it has resulted in fewer and fewer of our friends ever really talking to us again.

I had another conversation with my lawyer to go over the divorce filings. The lawyer is as confused about the filings as I am, and they are not entirely certain what my spouse is really after. According to my lawyer, there is little to no way my spouse will be awarded payment for legal fees, nor short term maintenance (alamony).

Curiuously, they felt that the “long distance travel expenses” was a complete error since that is related to divorce with children and is issued as part of a parenting plan involving visitation rights. I.e. I would be responsible for flying my child around whenever it was my weekend to see them. Further more, the college/post-secondary education requests are apparently only valid as a way to get me to pay for “part” of the education, and only if our child had a disability. Some portion would be expected to be paid for by my spouse. In either case there would need to be evidence presented that our child was actively enrolled in school and how much their tuition would be. One can’t simply add stuff like this to a filing in order to perform profit taking.

So it is finally payday. I managed to pay all my bills that were due, some of the bills were paid on newly arrived copies of my credit cards. By the time the bills, loan payments, and rent were paid I had a whole $74 remaining to hold me over until the next paycheck.

My friend came over again for the weekend. It was good to talk, to tell jokes, to laugh, even if I also spent large swaths of time crying and trying in vain to understand. Our oldest once mentioned that they had read somewhere that human tears are a mechanism for releasing excessive stress/anxiety hormones. I suspect there is some accuracy to that consdering how much less anxious I feel after spilling rivers of tears.

I tried once again to contact my children. I wrote a lengthy message which tried to outline and explain events leading up to 02/10. Tried to explain that their parent’s claims against me where a horrible distortion of facts which left out critical details. That this was a 50/50 state and that both of us would end up dividing all of this debt. I explained the discussions leading up to that day, the notes we took, the way I remember all of it happening. I explained to them the legal situation as described by my lawyers, the rules in regards to state law, all of -it. I tried to explain everything as factual and as direct as I could without attacking their other parent, though it is likely difficult to see that when someone is telling you that your parent broke a whole slew of rules and laws and that they were not acting out in the best interest of anyone.