A Worthless Restraining Order and Taking Back Your Life

Excerpt from my book in progress, from a story about my step-father: 

"I wanted him out of our lives and I didn’t care what that meant.  I knew that I didn’t want any of us to be victims any more.   So, when I drove my sister home from a church meeting one night and saw him driving slowly by the house, something snapped and I whipped a u-turn in front of the house and took off after him.  Us in my little white Mustang and him in his beat up little pickup truck.  We flew down these country roads in the dark in some crazy pursuit.  The question was, what was I pursuing?  Was it him or was it something else?  I wondered what I would do if I caught him.  What would I say?  What would I do if got my hands on him?  But, I didn’t care.  I felt this great sense of elation!  I smiled—might have even laughed.  The hunter had become the hunted and I wanted him to feel fear.  I knew these old back roads pretty well, and I knew we were headed for gravel.  He went up this hill and to the left and sped down the white rock road with no signs of slowing.  I knew we were a few hundred yards from a tee in the road, and with the darkness and the gravel dust, I decided to slow down, hoping I would still be able to catch him.  We pulled up to the tee and I stopped.  I couldn't tell which direction he had gone, and I knew I hadn’t been that far behind him.  And then I saw him.  He had obviously not known about the tee in the road and had plowed straight through a fence out into the field.  I looked and saw his car about a hundred yards ahead with the driver’s door open and smoke coming up from the engine.  It took a minute to spot him.  He had run about a hundred yards past the car and was crouched beside a tree watching me.  It was a really powerful moment for me.  Here was this man that I had grown to fear and despise.  This coward of a man who, for some reason I don’t understand, preyed on those less powerful than him.  There he was crouched down like a cornered animal.  I remember thinking how pathetic he looked.  How weak and gutless and powerless and pathetic he was.  I actually felt sorry for him.  My heart was softened.  Not in a way that I would ever let him back in my life, but in a way that would allow me to let go.  My sister and I just sat there for a few moments, watching the lights glare back off of his glasses, like a possum's eyes at night.  She said something about how that was just sad.  I agreed.  I flashed my brights at him and honked my horn a couple of times, and then turned around and drove away.  It wasn’t worth it.  He wasn't worth it.  What was I going to do anyway?  What did I expect would make him different?  He at least knew that I would pursue and that I wasn’t going to sit idly by without fighting back, and that was enough for me at that moment, even if nothing else changed."

Why I Have to be a Good Mom.

Trying to get a picture with the
new "light hat".  D insisted on
pushing the camera button
and picking the filter. Took a few
tries, but we had fun and what else 
matters??  Nothing else matters.

I’ve written many times about the scrutiny applied to adoptive parents, and I’ve expressed how, even though I know it’s necessary, it is hard to take sometimes.  It’s so invasive, and every area of your life is investigated to make sure you are good enough.  John and I used to joke that we don’t look good on paper.  Divorces.  Abuse in our families.  John was arrested twice, both of which were dismissed within 24 hours, but one of those was for domestic violence.  An argument with a girlfriend led to a revengeful call to the police, which led to an arrest.  And a subsequent breakup…. And the list goes on.  It doesn’t look good when you’re trying to prove you’d be amazing parents!  But, interestingly enough, these are the things that have pushed us both to have the desire to be amazing parents.  I won’t speak for John, except to say that his growing up with an incredibly abusive father and then living with a single mom on welfare in Oklahoma certainly has had its lasting repercussions.  I will mainly speak to my experience, and how it has pushed me to try to be the best mom.

I experienced the divorce of my parents and the breakup of our family when I was eleven.  A couple of years later, my mother remarried a man who turned out to be a psychopath.  Most people associate that word with a dangerous killer, but it’s really a personality type and is much more common than just in headline criminals.  My stepfather is/was one.  He still is, but he’s not my stepfather anymore.  I won’t go into all the details—that’s a story for another time.  Suffice it to say, he had an impact on me—on all of us.  He was destructive and manipulative.  He could be charming and he could be scary.  I know now that he was a coward, but in the moment, you don’t always know that, and you don’t know if this will be the time he will snap and do something much more drastic than you thought he was capable of.  I felt very out of control, and I think there are lasting effects from that still with me today.  He could be so cruel, and then the next morning would be joking around.  And, when you are young, that is just so confusing.  I have continued to have dreams over the years of being attacked and never being able to defend myself.  I freeze.  I can’t scream.  I can’t fight back.  It’s awful.  I was never attacked physically by him, but I think that feeling of being out of control has stayed with me.  We had confrontations—screaming, yelling, struggling over things, I did get shoved to the ground once but that wasn’t as bad as having gasoline thrown on me.  And he was a smoker, so I knew there was a lighter in his pocket.

Anyway, I will stop there.  My point in sharing this is that I have never wanted my children to feel the fear or neglect or insecurities that I felt.  Every day I work so hard to make sure that My son knows how much I love him.  I hug him and tell him how sweet and handsome and smart and strong he is.  I look him in the eyes and tell him these things all day every day.  I try to not seem frustrated to be parenting him, because I want him to know that I love being his mom.  I never want him to feel that he is a burden.  When he is grown, I know he won’t remember a lot of his childhood, but I want him to remember how much I loved him and how much I loved being with him.  That is my goal.  It is what I work for every day.  It means more to me than most will know, without knowing the whole story.  If I can do this one thing, then I will have been a good mom.

( I originally wrote this on my adoption blog, but since a significant part of my memoir deals with my ex-step-father, I decided to include this here.  He affected me in ways I've only begun to understand these last few years of writing the stories of my life.  I have taken a lot of his power away by writing about him, but his influence can't be ignored.  For more on our crazy adoption journey, check out weareadopted.blogspot.com)