I walked out of the courtroom and was outside my body. Disconnected from the reality that I had just given up my children and the right to be their mother. It was a blow below the knees and I was paralyzed wanting only to crawl in a hole and die. I shook my lawyers hand and thanked him for allowing my children to be stolen from me, but not really. It was me who told him that I was not going to fight against my children’s strong desire to live with their father. He won at a game I wasn’t playing. I was more interested in the welfare of our children and not ripping them apart from the truth or the delusion that I am a horrible mother. My kids hated me and wanted nothing to do with me because I divorced their father. The past 12 months were spent defending myself as a human as I was repeatedly ripped apart at the seams. I gave up child support because I thought it would diffuse the situation. I changed lawyers as mine was truly cut throat and I just wanted to get on with my life. Nothing helped. The past year was hell going up against a Guardian Ad Litem who was assigned by the court to evaluate if I was a fit mother. To what extreme does one execute revenge as to take away a child’s mother? “I could not fight the powers that be” echoed in my brain over and over. The words my father offered when I asked him why he never came to see us as children.
Slowly I got into my truck and sat there for what seemed like hours but was only minutes. Zombie was not even close to describing the mental shut down I experienced nor the pain shooting throughout my soul. I should not have been behind the wheel and was not fit to drive. I wanted to die. I thought about slamming into an oncoming truck. That moment I discovered pain like no other. All I ever wanted in life was to be a mother. Seriously starting when I was 14 babysitting, as a mother’s helper full time over the summer, a full time nanny, a licensed day care provider twice – it never ended. It was part of me and I conducted an ‘independent study’ on how to be a good mother. I started with unwinding my own mother’s methods and learning how not to be like her.