Where the story ends and I begin it

For years now I have had people tell me I should write a book about our journey with Rebecca.  What we went through when we were younger, how everything progressed over the years, and where we have landed now. If nothing else, to show people how the system can really be, how tough it is, how things should change and how if affects a child.

Through out the years I just never felt like that timing was right.  I didn’t feel like the story had an ending yet, better yet, the happy ending that everyone would want to read.  The ending that you would think would come out of all of it. I think deep down, I was waiting for that ending myself.

Now, in the past two years, I feel the ending has come. My time raising her has ended, abruptly and sadly.  The ending that we had always hoped for, doesn’t exist.  Sure, life can change down the road, as she grows older and wiser perhaps we can reconnect on some level but it will never be the same.  Her continuing actions are creating a journey that will be complicated and rough for her. I can no longer help her with that.

When we first found out she was 14 and pregnant, I cried for days.  I was angry, hurt, sad and every other emotion you could imagine.  I’ve prayed for her, thought of her every day, and miss her terribly.  I saw her at my Grandmas funeral in May, she stood feet away staring at me, a person I no longer knew.  A person about to turn 16 and pregnant with her second child, unsure who the baby daddy was, the possible fathers standing all within the same vicinity of us.  Yes, I just wrote all that.  I stood in the back at the funeral, my last obligation to this family and walked away for good, not looking back.

The day I found out she was pregnant with her second child, I had just left our fertility specialist.  Yet, I didn’t cry, I didn’t get angry, I didn’t feel sad, I felt nothing.  I called my ex-husband and we spent a lot of time in silence, on the phone.  Neither knowing if there was anything left to say that hasn’t been said over the years.  I couldn’t work up any type of emotion and I thought seeing her there, that day at the funeral, would work up something and it didn’t.  The person I knew is gone and I can’t do anything about it.  I can’t do anything about how she is living, the fights between the baby daddy and her, the cops repeatedly being called on her, the possible drug use, etc.  The system did/does its thing, she made and makes choices, and the consequences are hers and the rest of the family that is involved.

My character in this story is no longer needed, it is nothing more than a bystander , watching a disaster unfold, from afar and I can’t begin to tell you how fucked up that feels.

Years ago, when I was seeing a therapist for my divorce, we talked a lot about this situation in particular.  I can honestly say I think I have talked it out and around in circles but I need something else.   I’m now feeling that need to maybe put it on paper. Write the story in its final way, as it is today.  I don’t know, honestly, what I am looking to gain from it, aside from the chance to tell my entire side.  The side that people didn’t want to hear over the years, the side that my family ignored, the side that very well, may come back up in court, thanks to some custody proceedings that are current.  Also, I’m tired of explaining it to people that ask or that I meet or that have questions.  I’m tired of starting from the beginning because the beginning was 16 years ago and fuck that is hard to cut down into a 2 minute conversation.

Her story continues without me but I still want to share our story.  My hope is that, God forbid, someone else finds themselves in the same journey, they know that others have walked it before them and they are not alone.  Because Lord knows, it is a damn lonely path.