Rock bottom!

Perfect parents

I want to start by examining that phrase, I feel like in today’s day and age parents and especially mothers are held to this standard of hopeless perfection. You can’t mess up or do anything that others don’t agree with or you run the risk of losing everything.

A little back story about me I have 6 kids, 2 with my first husband, 1 with my second husband and 3 with my third. That alone leaves me open for more than enough judgement by others.

Now I wanna talk about my second marriage because this is part of my rock bottom. I was with this man for 7 years total. After my first marriage ended I felt like such a failure I never wanted to get married again. He asked me 3 times before I said yes. It was important to him as he had never been married before (his mom made sure I knew she thought not marrying him was selfish). After 4 years together we got married in a small ceremony in Banff AB while I was pregnant and unable to enjoy the night. It was definitely a wedding all about him! I watched 2 young kids who kept waking from the drunken noise and watched my new husband sing love songs on karaoke with his mom. Insert red flag here…

2 months after the wedding we moved into a home we purchased together. One day shortly after I was paying my bills online when I noticed that $1200 was taken by the bank. I proceeded to call my bank only to find I wasn’t allowed to be told why (meaning it was because of my husband it was taken). That’s when I learned he had accumulated almost $10,000 in debt I knew nothing about. That was only the tip of the iceberg though. After we were married it didn’t take long for him to turn into an angry abusive nightmare. I spent the next 3 year miserable while being punched, pinned down, and sexually assaulted. Without going into details he honestly to this day doesn’t believe he ever did anything wrong.

I finally got to courage to leave him after suffering from a stroke and having him be stressed out because I wasn’t home to do laundry… he made sure to not keep a job just so I couldn’t financially leave him. I worked all the time and still had to come home clean and cook and do laundry because if the house wasn’t perfect he would get stressed out and take it out on me and my kids.

That’s the back story now fast forward 4 years. Every so often as a way I can only imagine to continue the abuse on me; he will make a threat

1) I could only afford an apartment after I left and my daughter slept in a large storage room so she could have her own space.

He says that’s not ok I’m calling child services

2) he lost his job yet again and couldn’t afford our mortgage anymore so I offered to move back in and pay it while he found a smaller place… I gave birth to twins…

He says you have kids in a small 2 bdrm condo I’m calling child services

PS the only reason I was there was because someone had to pay for it.. until we could sell it.

3) I was stressed and busy having 3 kids under 2 and was trying to encourage our son to bathe independently.

He says he never bathes or brushes his teeth at your house I’m calling child services.

4) him and my current husband have an argument after he barges in my house yelling and screaming in my face.

He says I’m calling child services

Now I think I’ve established a baseline here so you can understand how this is his go to when wanting to hurt me. However this fifth and final thing he does…

Our son has a tempter tantrum so bad I had to physically restrain him which he witnessed most of. Our son wiggles out of my arms and runs down the street at which time he just happens to be driving past. Pulls over takes off with him in his car and doesn’t answer his phone or texts for 3hrs at which time I learn from the police he called child services this time and I can’t see my son until they investigate the incident. Which by the way won’t even begin for 2 weeks… this is what rock bottom feels like…

When your abused and long after you leave they continue to be able to manipulate and control you is the most hopeless feeling on earth. He believes he’s the “perfect parent.”

Also please note the timing of this was questionable as his mother was coming down for the weekend and he asked me if he could keep our son and I said no (which I usually don’t) but he had him the last weekend to take him camping. I felt like maintaining his schedule was important.