Monday, January 26, 2009

The parade of assholes will not be televised

I've been trying to rid myself of magical thinking over the last year. No more belief in fate or karma. I want to eliminate any non-logical beliefs from my life. (Except that whole superstition about your right hand itching when you're about to get money and your left hand itching when you're about to lose it- that one always fucking works).

So it's been a hell of a test the last few weeks when nearly every asshole to cross my path has made a marching band noisy return into my life. The latest (and I blame Anna Belle for bringing it up in comments- I believe she cursed me but I still adore her. Wait- that's more magical thinking!) is the Kid's fuckwad father.

It is incredibly difficult to believe that the universe doesn't have some horribly sadistic plan for tormenting me at the moment, or that there isn't some big life lesson I need to learn about tolerating assholes who refuse to die like I wish them to. But no more magical thinking. This is just an annoying rough patch and I will survive.

But back to the Kid's asshole father.

I left him partly because he was a raging drug addict. I almost could excuse his neglect of the Kid for the last 13 years because it really is better that as a fucked up addict he stay far away from the Kid. Almost.

But he tells me he's been clean and sober for 7 years.

7 fucking years.

And no child support?

WTF is his excuse for that? No seriously. If he got himself clean, then didn't he have to go through that whole taking responsibility thing? Did it really take him 7 fucking years to remember that he has a Kid he's been neglecting for nearly his entire life.

And now he "wants a chance to be the father that (the Kid) deserves".

Except for that whole feeding him and clothing him and housing him part. What he really wants is to show up for a few hours with some age inappropriate toys (that's what happened the last time he wanted to play daddy) and spend a few hours assuaging his guilt.

After having dealt with my own dad recently, I've decided that parents should be made to face the cold hard truth of what their neglect does. So I gave the Kid's asshole of a father the run down on how hard life is without child support for his kid.

The thing is, I also said he could see the Kid IF the Kid wants to see him. And the Kid is a loving, forgiving kind of person. So he said he'd meet his dad.

But after giving his dad the run down on just how much he's failed as a parent, the emails have dried up (along with the paltry child support payments I finally started seeing after the state threatened him with jail time). Suddenly doing the actual work of being the father that the Kid deserves seems like to much trouble.

I know him well enough, even after all these years, to be able to tell you peeps word for word what's going through his mind right now (he did seek help from an MRA group when we split up after all, they are pretty boring in their mindsets). He's thinking that I'm a bitch for keeping his son from him (which I'm not). He's thinking that this is all about money and that I'm a greedy cunt (except that most of parenting is about money- making sure your kid is housed and fed and clothed are pretty basic and the amount he's supposed to pay in child support doesn't even cover a quarter of that).

But I really don't care what he thinks about me. What I care about is that he has (and will) look for any excuse to neglect his Kid. And that breaks my heart for the Kid.

As for magical thinking, whatever the universe is trying to teach me right now I don't wanna know. I just know that the parade of assholes must end sooner or later. There are a limited number of assholes in my personal history for a reason.

No comments: