Mid-weekend

I'm waiting for E and his kids to arrive. We're going out to a local restaurant, after a day of hangin' together at his place. The dank and dark of December are getting to me. That and everything else.

I worry about E's daughter. She's ten going on fourteen, and I think her complicated life is getting her down. She woke up crying because she couldn't sleep and was exhausted. Apparently she heard a noise in the night that kept her up and so she watched videos until the early morning. I was worried the noise came from us, but I'm not sure. E always assures me his kids sleep through anything, but obviously she didn't. Our weekends are these strange times of coming together in a fairly new family situation. It is fun most of the time, but tiring, too, as our kids go back and forth so much. How can divorced parents make their messed up lives easier for their kids?

I'm going to try, over the next few weeks, to stabilize A by reverting to her summer schedule. It is the only thing I can control for. From my internet reading on child development, it seems more than 3 days away from either parent can result in overwhelming stress for a child, so this will prevent that, at least. From there, I am hoping something else can be negotiated. When I asked my lawyer about this on Friday he said, "Not likely. He hates you." Which, of course, I didn't need to hear. I told him that and so he repeated it again, a couple of times, and reminded me that my ex spent the entire 2 hour wait for the Case Conference in a small room adjacent to the courtroom, implying that he couldn't bear the sight of me, I guess. Then he added, "I've seen it before. He really hates you."

In my own defence, I said, "Well, I don't know why. I didn't do anything to him."

Which is true. Nothing except stop loving him, if I ever did love him. Now it is hard to tell what went on there. It certainly wasn't what love feels like now. I had no idea what I was dealing with. I suppose I still don't, and that is why the cold feels so unbearable and unremitting.