I have refrained from writing a lot about my day to day interactions with my oldest in here, and that is quite intentional. Something Derek and I have joked about a lot over the years is where I get my blog views from, because I do keep tabs on them. Our joke is that it's Dan reading my blog, and that joke is funny to us because I know that Dan has no reason to be interested in my life, we don't have conact with each other, and like...he's a relatively sane adult with no reason to keep tabs on me. For the same reason I don't keep tabs on him. I am still unpacking the baggage from our relationship, but I'm not seeking him out to learn everything about his life in secret. Derek and I both know that it isn't Dan reading my blogs, so we think it's kinda funny to act like it is. In reality, we both feel pretty confident that the people reading my blog are his ex wife, and my oldest's step mom. Our middle kiddo has confirmed the former to us before, about how their mom would use my blog as a way to make me look like a bad person, harping on my abortions, or my previous stints as a sex worker, to judge me and find me wanting. Derek told me that when he went to a funeral to support his ex-wife, she sat down with him and apologized for being so horrible about me. Which I appreciated, apologies are hard and it takes real courage to say, "hey, I fucked up, can we move forward". Whether or not she still reads my blog, I don't know, nor do I particularly care. I've never cared that she read it...per se. If you're curious about me, I get it. I'm around your child, and you want to know what you can about me. It's a natural curiousity. Using it to villainize me to your child so they'll think I'm awful and not like me is something else entirely, though I can understand that step-parents can make us feel the threat of being replaced, and can instill a fear that our children won't love us anymore. I think socially we're conditioned to see love as a pie, and every slice offered to someone but you makes your piece smaller and smaller, when in reality, love is usually a well that never runs dry because it is consistently replenished by the love we receive from others. There is an abundance. Enough for all of us to enjoy, and nobody gets any less than anybody else. One of the few truly great things my mom would say is the more people we have who love us, the better, and I believe that with my chest.
My oldest's step mom, however. It has always bothered me knowing that she kept tabs on me. I have expressed to all of my partners (except Dan, actually), that I knew my oldest's step mom was stalking the living fuck out of me, and I fucking hated it. I hated it for several reasons, mostly because I just....didn't understand the interest in me after I signed away my rights. Why keep tabs on me? I am no longer a person of consequence to you. I found it entirely despicable that the interest could go one way and I was powerless to stop it, but my interest in my child was not allowed. After I signed away my rights, I would seek out photos of my oldest, because I missed them. I wanted to be able to see my baby grow up, even from a distance, but every single fucking time I would find an avenue to see my kid, it would go dark within days. I couldn't figure out how the fuck that was happening, but I think that I may have been writing in my blogs or on my myspace page about seeing photos of my oldest and then I would get blocked. And it wasn't just me who would get blocked. My friends. My family. All of us, one by one, were discovered and silently exiled from being allowed even a quiet glance at Rhyann. I was adamant that nobody reach out to Rhyann, I did not want them to be frightened more than they already were, I did not want to be villified to them, so I just...demanded we all keep a safe distance. We weren't trying to horn in on Rhyann's life, or make any kind of trouble, we just wanted to see them grow up and learn about them from afar.
Allen and I used to joke about my oldest's step mom reading my blog, and I used to throw barbs into my entries just for her. Is that adult behavior? Insofar as I was behaving that way as an adult! But should I have been doing that? Yes absolutely. Over the many many years of trying to regain access to my oldest, this woman took part in stonewalling, denying, and making things generally fucking impossible for me. It wasn't just her, not at all. My oldest's entire family was garbage to me, and I have never ever ever minded telling them so. But my understanding of who was truly at the front of the line to make even silent access to my oldest impossible means their step-mother is the person who gets the largest amount of my seething, white hot animosity.
I think my years here are correct, and if they are...awesome, but if my timeline is somewhat off, oh well. Really, in the context of everything else, I don't care about the years, they do not matter to me. Getting the details right is important, but the details I'm going to recount are unchanged by the years they took place in.
At the end of 2020, I got a message from my oldest's step-mother saying Rhyann wanted to talk to me. Honestly I don't remember the extent of her message, other than the gist of it being that Rhyann wanted to talk to me. I was so nervous and excited and...wary, I guess? I don't trust her at all, as my experience of her had shown her to be a manipulative cunt with little to no feeling for anybody outside of herself. I remember talking to Derek about this, we were standing in our kitchen and ultimately, I decided that finding an inroad was the most important thing. My last comunication with my oldest had been in 2009, and that was longer than I wanted, so I moved forward with the idea that it was best to not bite the hand that has the potential to feed. I wrote back to my oldest's step mother saying I would love that, how should I proceed, I even said that I had let go of hating her. If memory serves, my oldest's step mother told me that the best thing I could do would be to reach out to Rhyann because Rhyann would not do it first. In my head, this made sense. A couple of years prior, I had been minding my own business, sitting in my office in our house in Ewa Beach, and I got an instagram alert that my oldest had liked a post I made about editing photos and eating keto vegan chili. I was so fucking shocked, but no sooner had the alert come in, it was removed. My oldest removed their like on my post. Which made me sad, but I was ultimately hopeful that maybe they were starting to get curious about me. I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I had noticed, because I didn't want to scare them off, so I just went about my normal business. When my oldest's step mom was like, Rhyann wants to talk to you but is afraid to do it first, I thought about the instagram post and I was like, ok. Ok, this is a puzzle that's starting to fit together.
I asked Derek what I should do, and he was like, well...go ahead and reach out. I waited a little bit, I was very unsure of what I was going to say. What do you even say to your essentially estranged child after eleven years? How do you approach that? Do I flood them with how much I love them and have missed them? That wouldn't be wise, because I guessed that Rhyann did not really care to hear that from me, and I should probably just....talk to them without making it about me. I bet I probably came to the conclusion that I was going to botch it no matter how carefully I tried to ease into it. I sent a message to my kid, I don't even remember what I said. I don't remember word for word what Rhyann said to me, either, but the primary take away was Rhyann responding to my message saying that Shila only messaged me to get back at Rhyann, that she was essentially just being cruel, and that Rhyann did not think they really wanted to talk to me. I am pretty confident I told them ok, maybe I said some other things, but after that, I was devestated. I cried on and off for two whole days. Rhyann eventually did message me again, and said they were curious and wanted to talk to me, but it had to be at their pace, which was fuckin' fine by me, but I remember telling Derek that I was nervous, because I had already had the idea of being reunited with my kid taken away from me by my own kid (which was their right, just to be clear, but it isn't like that choice was impact free for me, and understanding someone's rights to make choices for their lives does not mean that the others that decision surrounds won't have big feelings), could I manage that again?
Obviously I could. And did. And after talking to Rhyann for a few days, their step mom messaged me again, I cannot recall what she said. But I told her I was grateful to her for taking care of my child for the last fifteen years, but that we would never again speak to each other like neither of us knew how all of it ACTUALLY went down, and that she worked overtime to make me a monster to my own child, and while I meant it when I said I no longer hated her, I did not forgive her. She protested and said she never did any of that, that I was wrong, and either she blocked me or I blocked her, but that was the last I spoke with her. And good riddance to bad fucking rubbish, she never brought anything of value to my life PERSONALLY. Separate from being a mother to my oldest, but that was not for me. And honestly, it didn't bring value to my life because I was more than willing to also take care of my child, and I do view her as being directly involved in taking that ability away from me.
Over the next year, Rhyann and I go to know each other. My dad paid for Rhyann to come to North Carolina with us for the first family reunion our entire family had had in years, and that was the first time I got to see my oldest, my amazing, wonderful baby, since they were less than two years old. For me it was exceptionally emotional, and so much of me was upset that I couldn't express my joy loudly and overwhelmingly the way that I wanted to, because I could only imagine how stressful and wild it was going to be for Rhyann. Did I want to smother them with hugs and kisses and cry and laugh and explode my joy and sorrow and relief and guilt into them? Absolutely. But I knew I couldn't do that, because this was their first time seeing someone they didn't know and didn't love. It was different for me, I had loved them their whole life. But they had only really been taught to fear me and dislike me. I spent almost 100% of that trip worried about how Rhyann was coping, was I being too clingy. I made sure that they knew they had their space to untether and process, and when they would uilize that space, all I could do was talk to my bestie and be like, I JUST AM SO WORRIED ABOUT HOW OVERWHELMING THIS MUST BE FOR THEM I HOPE THEY ARE OK I JUST WANT TO HUG THEM ALL THE TIME AND SNUGGLE UP ON MY KID I HAVE MISSED THEM SO MUCH BUT THEY WOULD THINK THAT IS WEIRD I HOPE THEY ARE HANDLING THIS OK DO I SEEM WEIRD WOULD YOU LOVE ME INSTANTLY IF I WAS YOUR MOM??
I think they had a good enough time, because they agreed to come back in November to do big fat food day and present giving. With the other two kiddos here, to boot. That's a LOT of family to meet in a shor time frame: your bio mom, your step dad, your bio grandpa on your mom's side and his wife (your step-grandma? I mean, Caryn is just Rhyann's grandmother, but I'm trying to title everyone correctly), your horde of great aunts and uncles on your bio mom's side, your double horde of cousins, and your mom's best friend...your honorary godmother (even though your bio mom is an atheist of the highest order), who is married to your bio mom's cousin and is now double family....THEN you go on to agree to come to your bio mom and step-dad's house at a traditional holiday time of year when your step-sibing and half sibling are both home? During the overwhelm of a food holiday and a gift holiday, with forced joy activities? I think they had a great time. We did our usual activities...cookie decorating, doing the absolutely unhinged Santa's Magical Kingdom in STL, the garden glow at the botanical gardens...we did a lot. That's a lot of family time in one year with people you haven't known your whole life.
I didn't know how to really behave during these visits. I opted to just...be a mom? Like, to behave as if Rhyann has always been there, no special treatment, no being weird, just like...oh, yeah, my three kids are all at home, as is normal this time of year.
During off visits, Rhyann and I spent more time talking via insta to kind of catch up...not even catch up. It did feel more like just being in the groove of being someone's mom and they don't live with you full time. Like, when Alex is with her dad, I message her every day, we talk for as long as she wants, we video chat if she agrees, but it's all pretty typical day to day conversations. Look what I did! and Check out this fun video I saw, what do you think of this? No deep dive questions, really. No like, "hey, so I grew up my whole life hearing this, what up with that?" The first couple of weeks that Rhyann and I were chatting there was a lot of Rhyann sharing things like that with me, but not really asking me about them. Just sharing info. Revelations like that came sporadically as time went on, and it was always hard for me to navigate how to handle the things Rhyann would tell me. Like, to Rhyann I usually would joke about some of them? When Rhyann told me that their step mom told them all I ever fed them was cheese slices. That was just so fucking absurd...on a billion levels...that it seemed the most sensible thing to do was poke fun at it. The next time Rhyann came to visit, I bought them cheese slices as a gag. Whether or not Rhyann found it ACTUALLY funny I'll never truly know, but I do know they laughed about it with me.
It wasn't just shit like I only fed Rhyann cheese. Rhyann also told me that they had been shown pictures of someone who was skinny, with bad teeth and bad skin (Rhyann said that the person looked like the obvious stereotype of a meth addict) and told that was me. Their mother. That I was a bad person. They had also been told that I had to wear men's shoes because I had man feet. They were told that I hated them and wished they were dead. Some of the things they shared with me were laughable...like the men's shoes part made me chuckle. But none of it is really funny when looked at in aggregate. I had been demonized to my child over years and years. I was warped into a scary, ugly monster that hated my child and hoped for their demise, and like...externally, what can you do but laugh at how obviously untrue those things are? Internally, it was death by a thousand cuts. Sometimes I would cry about it all to Derek. Whatever new thing Rhyann shared with me about how they had been made to feel about me as a kid growing up, I occasionally needed to be in hyserics about all of it because I couldn't understand how people could not just hate me so much, but hate me so much that the only reasonable course of action to them was to terrify a child with stories of me. I child I missed more than anything in the world had been frightened of me. And like...this wasn't new. When I had still been allowed to talk to Rhyann, they would tell me how much they hated me all the fucking time. They hated me, and their mom and sister told them I was a bad woman who was going to kidnap them. When I took Chris and Shila to court, I had to read in court documents they submitted that my child was so scared of me that they couldn't take the bus to or from school because they were so afraid I was going to be there to steal them from their family. And I had to read about how Rhyann was so afraid of me that they would have nightmares and wet the bed for days after their weekly talk with me. The despair that brings is otherworldly, knowing how all I wanted to do was be my child's mother and to love them, and they were too terrified of me to even chat with me without saying something that cut me to the core.
I remember once talking to Rhyann on the phone and I had told Rhyann that I was their mommy, Rhyann said, "you're my mom?" and their grandmother was SUPER QUICK to correct and say, "no that's not mommy, that's Drea". I was fucking LIVID in the moment, and then I was so god damn crushed. My space in Rhyann's life was being actively erased and anytime I called Rhyann's dad and his family out for it, they would find some way to punish me for it. Rhyann's dad thought it was acceptable to move out of his apartment and change his number without telling me, and when I got fucking fed up with nobody telling me where he had moved, or what his number was, despite weeks of asking his mother and step-father for the information, I called the police and said my child had been kidnapped. How was that rewarded? Not with access to my child, but with being told I could come see Rhyann once a week for an hour (keep in mind I lived in Colorado and they lived in California), and I could call Rhyann for fifteen minutes once a week. I remember the police officer telling me that they couldn't do anything other than make contact, and having made contact, they were finished wih their job and were closing the kidnapping allegation case. No information would be given to me, not the new address where my child lived, not a phone number, just a promise that yes, my child is alive. How, I ask you, does that not prove my child has been kidnapped? I didn't say they were murdered, I said they had been snatched and I was not informed of where they had gone. That cop did go on to agree to testify that Rhyann's dad was very reluctant to give me any information about my oldest and their whereabouts, but that his hands were tied and there was nothing else he could do for me. Add that on to the fucking pile of reasons why cops are fucking useless. Well, not the top. I think the "murdering people with impunity" belongs at the top of the pile, but like...my addition still belongs in the pile. It's always abolish the police in this house.
So. It isn't like I wasn't used to being stonewalled and hated, and it isn't like I didn't know they were working triple overtime to make sure Rhyann never considered me family and never reated me like a human being. I suppose I foolishly assumed that once I relinquished my rights and stopped pursuing custody, they would stop talking about me entirely. I would vanish, Rhyann could have the mom they knew as their mom, their dad, and their siblings without any outside agitators interrupting their family flow.
I didn't write about Rhyann often, it was too painful. I missed my child so much, so I latched on to a fuckton of shit to keep me afloat. I tried to find solace in religion as the court case was going on, hoping that some sort of prayer might help me get my kid back. I drank when I saw that my efforts were for nothing. I drank when I signed everything over. I talked to Alex about her sibling a lot, in the quiet space of our mommy and daughter time, because it was a vaccuum I could pour my sadness into without judgment. Alex was just little, but she would ask questions about her sibling and then hug me when I would start to cry. I started answering questions about my oldest that made it sound like they were dead, because I learned really fast that nobody asks questions when they think you've lost a child that way, but if you tell them your child no longer lives with you, they want to grill you into oblivion. I did write about them sometimes, though. When I felt like I had nobody to talk to, and nobody who understood, I would blog. I started blogging when I was with Dan, after he bought me a camera and I tried to start one of those 365 photography projects. Turns out I really loved having a space I could dump my brain into. I had tried blogging a few years before and didn't really stick with it...I think I had been using Livejournal, but it didn't quite stick. I blogged with Amber through her fertility issues. I would sometimes write about Rhyann in veiled ways, sometimes in more obvious ways, but not as much as when I started using blogger. I recall having three nights over the two years-ish Dan and I were together where I had my usual break down over missing my kid....where the emotions got too overwhelming and I would just sit for hours and sob. But he wasn't terribly helpful during those periods, so I would blog about them afterward. I didn't really have a support system that could understand what I was going through, so I didn't really talk to people about it. After awhile, you get sick of hearing people throw optimism at your feelings when what you need is for someone to just...walk with you through the darkness and hold your hand as you navigate it all. I would get angry when people would tell me, "one day they'll come looking for you, you will be reunited!" Hopeful daydreams did not feel like solace when I was years into the ache of not having my child with me.
I would write about the mistakes I made as a young mother. About my shame, my grief, the massive hole in my heart. My utter sorrow. It was all I had available to me. I sought out therapists when I could afford them, but I couldn't afford them for long, and all of the rehashing the same shit to new people got old, so I stopped seeking out therapists.
One of the things Rhyann told me was that their step mom had found my blogs and was kind of obsessed with them. They would read the ones to Rhyann where I talked about looking up their photos online and say I was stalking them. They would read the ones where I made admissions of the horrible things I did as a mother, like the time they were having a meltdown in a store and I bit them. Rhyann told me they memorized my blog address and would read my blog, as well, searching for any part where I wrote about them. Rhyann told me they would show these blogs to their friends and make fun of me. As much as I understand that Rhyann was indoctrinated to find me deplorable, and it is not their fault they found such actions acceptable, it does not mitigate the damage it did to me to hear that my outpouring of my shame and rage and grief and agony were used as a tool to mock and deride me. I was a curiosity to belittle, and I never would have had any idea that the darkest truths I wrote down were being poured over and shown off as a way to fortify the idea that I was a fucking creepy monster.
A few weeks ago, Rhyann got into a spot of trouble. Perfectly avoidable, they had been warned to not get themselves in this spot of trouble as it was their very favorite spot of trouble to be in, they got themselves into it anyway, and when I provided them with a consequence, they were angry. Now, here's the thing: I'm a parent, and I am used to my kids being fucking pissed when I say that an action they've performed comes with a consequence they won't like. It's fine. I'm not an unreasonable caregiver, really. Rhyann has a curfew of 1 am, something that has been a bone of contention the entire time they've lived here, and they have been absolute trash at getting home by curfew. Just rubbish. They have blown past curfew more times than I can count, and we've been pretty lenient about it, all things considered. Usually it's a "no going out for the rest of the week" kind of thing, nothing heinous. I have also let Rhyann know that if they inform me of their lateness past curfew and keep me in the loop, I will be a LOT more understanding about missing curfew. But they also never keep me in the fucking loop. A couple of weeks prior to this incident, Rhyann went and visited their brother when their family was in Osage for a week. Rhyann way blew past curfew, I think they came home at about 3am instead of 1. Didn't keep me updated, didn't let me know, didn't say shit. The next day I gently chided them and said I of course would have let them stay out later if they had just let me know what was going on, and I was most miffed they couldn't be bothered to tell me what the deal was. And I went on to say that they wouldn't suffer any kind of consequences, because they were with their family, and family time is important, I was just mad and worried when they didn't tell me they were going to be late. I told them that the next time they missed curfew, though, I was going to throw down the hammer. That they couldn't even be a SECOND late. Not one tenth of a second. They vigorously stated they understood, they would not be late again, it wasn't even going to be a thing.
When Rhyann was several minutes late returning from a date (I clocked at least five minutes late, though Rhyann swears it was only three), I took a video of the time, took a video of the car not in the driveway, and went to bed before hearing them come home, knowing in the morning I was going to have to do a lot of work to not freak the fuck out on them. I didn't freak out per se, but I did IMMEDIATELY tell Rhyann that I hoped their date was worth it, because car privileges were taken away for the next month, as well as all going out privileges. And they were big mad. Big big mad. Spent all day sulking and seething, which again...I'm a parent. That does not bother me.
What Rhyann did next, however, was cruel and unfuckingcalled for. Rhyann sent me a dozen messages, most of which I let roll off my back. They were venting, they were frustrated, that was fine, but they ended their message with telling me it was pretty absurd that I had the audacity to try and parent them when I abandoned them and gave up that right years ago.
And that was a fucking knife. Right to the very core of me. Not only because it wasn't true, and I thought I had been slowly telling Rhyann enough of what happened that they understood that, but it was also a calculated use of the worst thing in my life as a weapon to absolutely neutralize me. And it worked. I was fucking furious at first. Fury tuned into devestation, and I spent a solid two hours screaming and crying at Rhyann about how absolutely vile and monstrous it was to say something like that in a way where it was meant to hurt rather than interrogate. I angrily told Rhyann that if that's how they legitimately feel, that is understandable and they could have said as much at any other junction, but to say it in a moment of anger to lash out at me made them as hideously cruel as their father and step mother, and I was not exaggerating. It was like being around them all over again and being unable to make my kid see that I have loved them their whole life, and everything they think they know about me is a fucking horrible, horrible lie.
This nasty episode made Rhyann want to really understand everything that happened leading up to me no longer having custody of them. Rhyann and I spent a couple of hours the next day looking up court records in California...all we found was the order to pay child support. Which I had been paying for quite some time, though I believe Rhyann was told I never paid a dime (I could be wrong about that, I'm unsure, but it feels real enough that my gut says I remember Rhyann being told I never paid child support). I had my dad ask my mom for any kinds of emails between myself and Rhyann's family that she might have, I asked my dad to ask my mom if she had a copy of the court docs (she did not, and neither did my dad). My mom DID send a few emails she had saved between herself and Rhyann's grandfather, and me and Rhyann's dad and step mom. I read those to Rhyann, and Rhyann came up with a list of questions to ask their dad. It took a few days...maybe a week and a half?...before their dad made the space to talk to them, and while the conversation was irritating (I was present for it, though not involved), it ended with Rhyann's step-mom sending them almost, if not over, two dozen emails of what they called "evidence" that I was a horrible beasty that never loved Rhyann. The phone call ended with them threatening Rhyann with, "you'll see once you read these emails...you're not going to like what you're going to read." and "you'll see! And what are you going to do after you read these emails and you understand how horrible your mom really is?" Rhyann told them they would call and apologize, and they smugly said that yes, Rhyann would indeed be doing that.
When I recounted Rhyann's phone call with their dad to Derek later, I told him that there was a small chunk of time when their dad and step mom were describing the number of emails they had, and the content of the emails they had, where I really and truly started to question myself. WAS I saying I hated Rhyann? Had I emailed their step mother saying I wanted nothing to do with my kid and I wished they were dead? Did I sell Rhyann for 10K??? No. No of course I hadn't said those things or done those things. But there is something so fucking chilling about the certainty that Rhyann's dad and step mom had while shouting Rhyann down. Their certainty made me question my certainty. And for several minutes, I was terrified of what those emails were going to say. Had I forgotten that I was actually a monster, as I think most monsters tend to do?
No. No I was not. Not even close.
Rhyann and I spent the evening reading the emails together. Several hours, I believe. I read each and every email to them. Some of them were emails between my mother and Rhyann's step grandfather, some of them were emails from me to Rhyann's dad and step-mom, some of them were emails from me to Rhyann's step-grandfather, some of them were screenshots of the myspace page I had made for sending little notes to Rhyann (Rhyann's step-mom had that page flagged for child pornography and myspace rejected my appeal), some of them were copies of blog entries I had written. All of them...every single fucking one of them...showed how frustrated I was, how frustrated my family was, at being kept from Rhyann when all we wanted to do was love them and be a part of their life.
Rhyann told me that evening that they kind of understood where their dad was coming from when they mandated that I come to California first to see Rhyann and rebuild a relationship with them, and I sat there and nodded that yes, something like that does indeed make sense. But in my head, I was screaming about how nothing with their dad and his asks are at all what they seem on their face. Had their dad been saying that in good faith, I would have been a lot less demanding about them meeting me where I was to integrate Rhyann into an environment they could feasibly be spending a lot of time in (which also makes a shit ton of sense, and I was privately irked that Rhyann didn't concede that point, but whatever. Small potatoes, really) with the people they knew and trusted...however, their dad never does anything in good faith. What their dad was doing was making impossible fucking demands of me to look reasonable when he fucking knew I couldn't make them happen. It looks generous and considerate of Rhyann to say "just come out here first so they'll feel safe" when really, they knew I couldn't manage it, so they could ask that of me and feel like good people. They did this to me a lot. I had actually forgotten about them saying I could have one fifteen minute phone call a week and one hour long visit a week, which is absolutely maddening. How are those things reasonable? They aren't, they just thought it made them look compassionate. I knew it. My mom and I could both see right fucking through what they were doing. We both called them out on it. To me, it is infuriating that I feel like I can't argue with Rhyann's understanding of what their dad and step mom were saying and asking of me, because what if I'm incorrect and I'm just being belligerent and refusing to see that I was actually being unreasonable? I want to make sure I am honoring Rhyann's journey with this information as much as possible, even when it's hard to not shout WHAT DO YOU FUCKING MEAN YOU CAN SEE HIS POINT, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND WHO YOUR FATHER IS???? Rhyann has to come to their own conclusions, and if they conclude they find that reasonable and not a farce, then that is their conclusion and I won't interfere. Part of this journey for me is being accountable for the ways I've made mistakes with Rhyann and fumbled the fuckin' sports ball, and if that means swallowing my hatred long enough to not try and sway Rhyann's opinion another way, then that is what I'll do. But I hate it.
Rhynn asked their dad and step mom to read through the emails and highlight the parts that they felt backed up their claim that I never loved Rhyann, that I hated Rhyann, that I sold Rhyann for money (a statement their dad stressed at least five times), and Rhyann told me that they were told by their step mom something to the tune of, "I won't fucking do that shit, I'm not reading those". Which like...why? If you're so fucking sure that all of this shit collectively makes you look awesome and makes me look like a fucking dumptruck, shouldn't you be majorly excited to highlight that shit and be like...super duper smug about it? That is so their fucking M.O. I was floored when Rhyann said they refused to go through it and flag all of the really juicy, terrible bits...but only for about a minue. Then I was like, duh, of course they won't go through the emails, they know exactly what's in there, and that none of it is a plus for their version of events.
To date, Rhyann has not yet called their dad to have a second talk with them. They're thinking about contacting my mother, who the entire family except Derek is no contact with, because my mom was also present for all of this, and can give Rhyann more insight into what happened. Rhyann has been trying to talk to their grandma n their dad's side about everything, but has found that their grandma is not terribly helpful and just resorts to crying when pushed. I've told Rhyann it is more than a little hurtful that they can be explosively angry at me (which is valid, just to be clear) but that they have yet to find any outright anger at their dad, step-mom, and grandma. They were annoyed when talking to their dad, and I didn't hear them talk to their grandma, but it is deeply hurtful that they read the same emails I read, they told me they felt like their parents were working at keeping me from them...they can see exactly how hard they made that shit for me...and yet...they aren't outright angry. I've talked with them about this, and Rhyann says they've been too nervous about being angry with them because they didn't want it to impact their brother, which I understand. However, I also told Rhyann that their famiy isn't going to concede anything, anyway, and their family will demonize Rhyann's feelings and curiosity anyway, so Rhyann might as well be fucking loud about it. Get angry. They deserve it. I asked Rhyann how they thought I would talk to their dad and step mom about all of this, and they laughed because they knew I would shout them the fuck down and make myself heard. I do not give a single fuck if they listen or take me seriously. I know from experience they do not care about me at all, and it is really and truly starting to look like they didn't care about Rhyann, either. The stories Rhyann has told me about what growing up was like for them absolutely horrify me. Why Rhyann is still so set on catering to their feelings boggles my fucking mind. I mean, in theory I get it. I understand Rhyann's ability to be angry at me and not their dad is similar to Alex's ability to get angry with me and not their dad: I feel safer. I'm not going anywhere, I will not punish anybody for having big feelings, or being angry, and I will not force anybody out, or ice them out if I don't like what they have to say. This is not to say I don't get angry, but it IS to say that my anger is safe. My anger is loving parent anger, and far from permanent.
At least that's my assumption about Rhyann's ability to be shitty to me and Derek. They've said as much once or twice, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Rhyann is a self-admitted people pleaser, and additionally, Rhyann exhibits more of their dad's traits than I am pleased to admit (not terribly many, but enough that I'm concerned about righting that ship). It could be that Rhyann says that they can be angry at me loudly because they know I'm safe as a means of justifying shittiness with an answer they know will shut me up. Do I think that's the case? Not at all, but it isn't outside the realm of possible.
There's so much here that I don't even know how to say. I've been sitting with this heaviness over all of this for weeks now. This happened weeks ago (I started writing this on October 2nd), and I've been slowly writing about it since then. It's been wild to like...have spent 11 years thinking I knew exactly what happened, and exactly the depths of hideousness Rhyann's family could sink to, but Rhyann has been exposing more and more cracks in the level I thought was rock bottom, and it's been a lot to try and process how much fucking worse things actually were. When I was watching Rhyann grow up through photos, the only thing that kept me from absolutely losing all of my fuckin' marbles was seeing that it looked like they had a good life. I saw family photos from trips, I saw Rhyann doing make up stuff on youtube, Rhyann had a little soundcloud for a bit....on all surface levels, they looked happy. It was the only thing that kept me going, knowing my baby was out there living a good life. I wanted to be part of it, but if I couldn't be, at least they were out there having experiences and being loved. Most importantly was being loved. They looked loved.
This is not to say that Rhyann's family doesn't love them, and didn't love them. I would never insinuate that at all. What I would outright say, however, is they made some really shit fucking choices that showed how limited and fragile their love is. If your love for a child involves making them terrified of someone for no legitimate reason, that isn't love, that's fear and control. If your love for a child involves keeping them separated from their mother when their mother wants to be their mother, that isn't love, it's pettiness. If your love for a child involves blocking their family from seeing photos of them, that's control again. When you lie to a child knowingly, that isn't love. Huh. Maybe I would say they didn't really love Rhyann. At the very least, I don't think they loved Rhyann more than the idea of how they wanted to look TO Rhyann.
What's wild to me is like...the lies they've told Rhyann don't even make them look good. Telling Rhyann that all I ever fed them were cheese slices? Uh, why the fuck wouldn't you step in and make sure I was feeding them a more well rounded meal? This lie is additionally stupid because Rhyann's fuckin' step-mom was never ever ever in our house when I was still in California. Never set foot in there once, so what the fuck does she know about what I did or didn't feed my kid? Rhyann's dad was never there, either. He was always gone during the day, and when he came hom he was so fucking busy playing video games that he couldn't be bothered to notice what the fuck I did or didn't do. So where exactly did that information come from? If it was Rhyann's dad saying that's all i fed Rhyann, I have to ask again....why the fuck wouldn't you step in to change that? It makes you look like just as hideous a parent as it makes me. But it isn't even true. Rhyann loved cheese as a kid, and I for sure had cheese sticks for them at all times, but it was never all they ate. What a fucking amazingly funny lie.
And the lie that I sold Rhyann to them for 10k? This is fucking hysterical on multiple levels. Level one, the amount of money in question was 2K. Not 10K. Which makes me look WORSE. At least 10k is a fuckin' lot of money to the average person, so if you want to make me look like a money grabbing piec of shit with no interest in their kid, fuckin' smarten up and say the actual amount. It's in the emails they refused to re-read and highlight for Rhyann. Level two, don't you look like a fucking dick for agreeing to that?? If Alex's dad were to tell me, hey, I need ten K, can I sell my stock in Alex to you for that money? I would tell him to fuck all the way off, this would kill Alex, what the actual fuck is he trying to do by giving her up? I would never do it in a million years, and I don't think that any decent parent would. Why do Rhyann's parents think that makes them come out like heroes? What monster agrees to that? There is a story that goes with the 2K given to me by Rhyann's family, and I was very transparent about that with Rhyann from jump...not even waiting for Rhyann's dad to tell them I sold them for 10k. I told Rhyann about that money when they first started talking to me. I told them exactly what happened and why I was offered the money, a story that has been corroborated by people who were around when it happened, AND the emails sent to Rhyann by their step-mom. I have to imagine Rhyann's dad thought this was going to be a Senior GOTCHA moment, like maybe I hadn't mentioned it to them before, or they knew nothing about it, but I hav spille my little black guts to Rhyann and shared all of the information I remember. Every nasty, ugly part of it as I recall. Even the parts that make me look horrible, which are numerous (though Derek has argued to me privately that I did fuck shit up, but the context of why and how I fucked shit up matters. I tell him it's up to Rhyann to determine how much of it matters, and Derek rightfully points out that I don't really give as much of the context as I should, and he says I do myself no favors by trying to stay neutral and not "defend" myself so that Rhyann can reach their own conclusions. He's right in that I see it as trying to sway Rhyann's opinion by injecting emotions into it, and he's also right by saying my whys matter. I've tried to get better about adding my context).
The lie that I was a drug addict? Girl. While I do not think there is any shame in having an addiction, and I refuse to use addict as a pejorative, the funniest part of that is the idea that they had any clue as to who I was. Even WITH reading my blog. I was not out in these blog streets being like, I FUCKIN' LOVE DRUGS, CAN'T STOP USING THEM!!!!! I posted pictures of myself, but like...none oof them make me look the way that Rhyann described the pictures they were shown? I am not gorgeous by any stretch of the word, I'm just an average looking person. Like most drug addicts, actually. I just look average. When I was with Rhyann's dad, his use of weed was a huge bone of contention. I fucking hated it. I didn't get high very often, it was awful, it smelled, it made their dad dumber than he was sober (which, by all factors, was and is pretty fucking dumb), I wanted very little to do with it. I smoked very occasionally. I found pills to be a recreational delight in my twenties, but like...to the degree of addiction? Fuckin' hardly. Very typical amount of drug use as a twenty-something that went clubbing occasionally. The ONLY thing they could call me to Rhyann was an alcoholic, but even my stint of alcoholism was short lived (about two years, maybe?), AND it was a coping mechanism to block out my never ending misery over signing away custody of my child because I though that was the best decision I could make for them.
The lie that I hated Rhyann and didn't love them? Never in a billion fucking years. I have loved my child since the moment they were born. The second I heard them cry. It's hard to make people who have never been pregnant, and never wanted kids, able to conceptualize that for some of us, pregnancy is not an immediate love fest. My pregnancy with Rhyann was one of misery, though not because of Rhyann, it was because I had to imagine a life tethered to their father, and I fucking hated him. He made me feel small and ugly and worthless, and that is not a life of happiness, it's a prison. When I felt the first flutters of my baby in me, it was surreal, but not real yet. I couldn't picture my baby because that's just...hard. It's hard to see your baby as a person because they're not there yet. They're in you, sure, and that comes with real consequnces like body changes and kicking and cramps, but for me...Rhyann wasn't my baby until they were bon. And the second I heard them cry, that was it. I fell in love with my baby totally and completely. So much so that I remember being chastised by the nurses...gently...that it was ok for me to leave my baby alone so I could pee or shower, I didn't need to take them with me every second, and it was ok to put them down. I didn't want to be away from them. I was obsessed, and almost never without them. Leaving them when I left their father was the second hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, and the decision was not made without exhausting every avenue to try and make sure I didn't have to leave my baby behind for even a second. Anyone who knows me will attest to that. I have lovd my child with fierceness their entire life. They have always been included, no matter who was looking or not looking, because they counted. They mattered. They were mine, they were of me, they were missing from my life and while I eventually had to make it sound like they were just...gone in a way that people didn't ask questions about, they were never gone to those who knew me best. I talked about Rhyann all the time. Every day. I missed them, I wanted them to be with me, I ached to be their mother in more than just biological title. I have never once hated my child. Not a second of their life has been anything other than absolute enthrallment.
The lie that I was going to kidnap them. What? Where does that shit even come from?
I wish I had been keeping better track of the things Rhyann has been telling me over the last four years. It's been a dizzying amount of bullshit, and I can't quite explain how it's all impacted me. Sometimes it feels like going through everything...through the last 19 years...all over again. Because I have more of the context through which o view my experiences with. I feel like I've had to live this four different ways, each of them agonizing. Having lived through it in real time in the ways sit directly impacted me, and simultaneously dealing with the ways it was impacting my child, and now dealing with it AGAIN with more details about what was happening behind the scenes, and having more details about what was actually happening with my child during those years. It guts me constantly, and I have no fucking idea how to process it. I was already struggling with guilt and shame and remorse and regret and horror and self loathing, but it was kept in check by thinking Rhyann was living a good life. To find the contrary to be true unravels me. How am I supposed to process that? What am I supposed to do with that information other than self-immolate?
And to factor in how all of this must be impacting Rhyann. This is also actively impacting my baby. What do I do as a mom here? What do I do as a PERSON here? How does one manage the grief and anger without dying inside every fucking day? All of this weighs on me, it always has, every single day. Not a day has gone by in the 19 years since I left my oldest in California with their absolutely good for nothing fucktwat of a father where I haven't scrutinized myself, my actions, and held myself under an emotional guillotine for fucking up so solidly while trying to make the best decision with the hand I'd been dealt. How do I help them navigate what they're going through while I struggle with navigating this myself? The things I can't say out loud, because I don't want my baby to think that I can't understand they're also going through a differnt aspect of the same thing I'm going through. I must admit that I envy them for only having to hold the space for themselves, and they don't have to hold space for two people trying to understand and heal whatever the fuck size this wound is. Their step mom and their dad and their grandma were not just doing this to me, this has impacted so many people. It impacted Rhyann, it impacted their siblings, it impacted the family they were stolen from...who is meant to carry all of that weight? Where is it all supposed to go? I have been so fucking angry for the last 19 years that Rhyann's family...their step mom, their dad, their grandma, their step-grandpa...they have never had to hold any of this burden. And I'm so angry that they will never in their lives accept the havoc they have wrought and the lives they hve absolutely fucking demolished, because they can't see anything outside of themselves. They are selfish, they are heinous, they are terrible fucking people that I will never in my life forgive for what they've done to my oldest, what they've done to my family, and what they've done to me.
