For those that don’t know the story of how I ended up with a cat named Rebecca, here it is:
13 years ago the girl I was dating, who is 12 years younger than I, adopted 2 kittens from her program adviser in Doctoral school to get “brownie points,” according to her.
At that point, the kittens became “Michael’s cats” and I’ve been taking care of the female ever since. It should be noted I don’t like cats as a whole. They aren’t domesticated whatsoever, and they will scratch you with dirty nails and make you sick. It’s happened to me, so I know what I speak. They also aren’t as “clean” as people allege. They walk in their toilet, coat themselves with their own slobber, and lick places that aren’t exactly sterile. Enough said about that. I love animals, though, so I understand every animal has its own thing going on and I respect them, no matter how small. In fact, I respect some of the smaller ones even more.
When we married, I had a great dog named Annie who I adopted at age 5 from the Asheville, NC Animal Shelter. She died at age 16 during our divorce. It was one of the most horrible things I’ve ever had to deal with, and I’ve had to deal with some horrible things, my friend. No one should have to tend to the death of their beloved dog all alone. I kept imagining husband/wife couples out in the plain states where no one’s around and people had to contend with the loss of their spouse all alone. It had to be an unbearable loss.
There was a point where the male, Peter, was knocking over crystal bowls and vases and destroying everything, so the girl who adopted them, who eventually became my wife, then eventually decided to become my ex-wife, gave him away, and was going to give her away as well. Years after adopting them.
To make this point to my stepdaughter at the time, that responsible people who aren’t losers don’t just make promises and break them, and assume responsibilities and then dump them on other people or neglect them altogether, I told her I would “adopt” Rebecca myself, officially. She was pawned off on me about a decade earlier, but of course, no one admitted to it. You must think of the irony of that, looking back. But that is why I have Rebecca, who my ex-stepdaughter named 13 years ago.
My ex-stepdaughter is now 18 incidentally, and her mother has turned her against me totally. She claims the resentment is because of my 10-year job of role-modeling, which I won great acclaim for at the time.
She doesn’t want us to associate so she made her hate me. That’s the type of people I’m dealing with now. It’s incredible how mean and lowdown someone you once loved so passionately can turn out to be. I partly blame the types of people she began “hanging out” with online, mostly. It ruined my life and is destined to ruin our daughter’s life. This is why I am so persistent and determined to save her with all I have. Which has become very little over the years after meeting my ex-wife. I’ve lost nearly everything and now will be having to give up Rebecca. I’ve lost my job and apparent ability to acquire one, freedom to see and speak freely with my own daughter, I’ve gotten rid of my favorite material things (which matter not anymore), and can’t even move back to SC where I am at home, because of my ex-wife’s precious job here. She’s anchored us here very deliberately. My life? Doesn’t matter. Cecelia’s life? Doesn’t matter. The dumb job is what matters.
So, due to external forces imposed upon me and my cat, Rebecca, I am about to move, locally.
I’m not sure who and how frequently people such as my family and friends (as well as ex-family and ex-friends) come across and read what I write here. I hope frequently, because they are important to me, even if we don’t keep in communication as we should. They remain in my life in some way even if in a negative way, so I personally feel like that is a real factor to consider and deal with openly.
I have/had an uncle, who was my mother’s brother, Courtney, or “Cokey” as we called him. He vanished years back, with no goodbye, no idea whatever happened to him, or any clue as to what his final fate became.
That story? He and his father and other sister (my aunt Roz) wrote each other off way back when. Decades ago. It seems to be the fashionable thing to do in my family; to write each other off.
But Cokey ended up living right near me in Atlanta back around 2000, and he and I never knew it. He moved to a town near Savannah, Ga. near where my own mother and child’s namesake Cecelia was born, in Brunswick, Ga. He bought a sailboat on the west coast and somehow drove it back across the country to Savannah, and sailed it up to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. He asked my father if he wanted to accompany him on the trip, which my father easily declined. He should have accepted. You aren’t offered an opportunity like that very often in life.
I found some questions on sailing forums by him, and then…….nothing. No one has heard from him since. There was some talk of him having tax problems, so that may have been his solution. To sail around international borders and flee the country. But I don’t want my fate to be the same, where I just vanish, which is what my ex-wife seems to be trying to cause to happen. So this is my response to that activity by her. I want to leave a trail of my existence somewhere, despite my life closing in due to the aforementioned external forces.
I’ve been exiled to Kentucky from South Carolina for over 11 years now, and seek a return to my home state. That’s no secret to anyone who knows me. I didn’t want to move to Louisville, but I did because my now ex-wife sought her dream job here, which with a lot of my help which she’d never admit now, she attained.
We had a beautiful girl and my wife left me with no announcement or explanation when our daughter was 2. The reason was my ex-wife got tenure, a child by me, so her goals were complete and she was done with me. I was used as far as her purposes were concerned, so she tossed me in the trash and lit me on fire, and threw a bunch of garbage on top of me for good measure. And still shows up to spit on me. For no good reason, at all. I have no ill-will. I blame myself for allowing myself to become so vulnerable. People constantly assume I do foster resentment, which would be easily understandable, but I do not, and that’s a false assumption.
She remarried another person she just met a few months after leaving me, and they married a few months after our divorce was complete, which took about a (very long) year. They lived together with the daughters also living with them. Something that we did NOT do in front of her 1st daughter, incidentally, which shows a change in morality and her Christian “beliefs” by her, that were all just lies and charades.
They have since separated about a year ago and he lives in NJ with no visits by my ex or either our child or the child she had with her first husband, who is now 18. I helped raise her for 10 years as well, from 4-14 years of age. The only reason they remain married I can figure is financial reasons and the embarrassment she’d feel from such personal dysfunction. Her personal feelings are her top priority, which has been established and admitted by her.
Her ability to parent is limited by the examples she was given while being raised, which were poor. She ran away from home at 14. So she has no parenting mentor or role model at all. I do, and I have some high standards as a result of that, with regards to self-discipline, which she knows nothing of, honor and loyalty, which she is unfamiliar with, and so on.
So in an effort to make herself seem capable, which is impossible when I am around, her solution was to remove me from the family totally. Even though I have joint custody and obviously I love my daughter more than life itself. The method was simple: file a fake domestic violence charge against me. Which she did. And for good measure, just because she could, she also filed for an EPO and criminal charges for assault. And since then my life has taken a dramatic turn for the worse, not surprisingly. But with no sympathy.
Everyone knows certain types of women do this all the time. Especially our judge. She has hired a defense attorney because she needs one. I do not so I’m defending myself, Pro Se, as it’s called to make it sound fancy.
But I find myself in a Catch-22. I’ve been made an offer that if I admit guilt, I can wrap up the case faster than if I stand my ground which is the truth. But that will involve a jury trial and could last years, according to lawyers. They are blackmailing me in a sense. I have to go against my own morality and claim guilt just to be on some serious probation, have to take a mental health evaluation, and so on, for nothing! And by doing this, I may be able to speed up the reunification with my daughter to be able to visit normally again. The entire thing is incredibly ridiculous and is an example of somebody being able to make a mountain out of a molehill by exploiting the law.
The thing is as well, with this “record” pending against me now thanks to her, I cannot land a job. I repetitively have gotten letters in the mail with a copy of my background check and an explanation that they can’t make a determination on my eligibility for employment until the matter is closed. And that’s not with IBM, Tesla, Facebook, The Secret Service, the FBI, or groups like that. It’s after applying for local 3rd shift warehouse and bagging and inventory stocking jobs. People seem willing to assume I’m only applying for “dream jobs” implying I’m an idiot and snobby, which I try not to be either.
I pulled all my applications from data I’ve been keeping and I’ve applied to 107 remote jobs over the past 3 months. That’s JUST remote, and JUST 3 months. I apply to 3-8 jobs every day. I customize my resume and cover letters. I take assessments. I interview. I can’t land a job. I’m not ever giving up, but I don’t want anyone to ASSUME I am doing nothing, which would be foolish.
So I’m fighting the allegations made by my ex-wife as furiously as I can because it has deprived me of seeing our daughter. That’s her plan, without consideration of anything but her own want, I need to point out. No one else wants this situation at all. Cecelia our daughter and I both hate it. No one cares.
Back to poor, sweet Rebecca. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. I don’t want to take her to the pound. I don’t know anyone who can take her. I was thinking of contacting my ex-wife’s lawyer and seeing if she’ll take her since that would reunite Rebecca with Cecelia. Think of the irony of that situation. But the ex has a disobedient dog, unsurprisingly, that I think would kill Rebecca, and she also has a long-established pattern of killing, losing, and even throwing away pets. Her mother has a pattern of animal abuse as well, which is likely where she gets it from. So that doesn’t seem like an appealing choice either. My whole life has become choosing between the worst choices there are. I’m not used to this. At all.
Something I just realized is that in as many places as I’ve lived over my life, I don’t really have any photos or video of the places I’ve lived.
So I took a few as I vacate this little cottage we’ve been in for about 1-1/2 years. Over my own adult life, I’ve lived in about 20 different places. That’s a lot. But I’m getting older, which makes sense. I’ve lived in some amazing places and some small places and some large homes and some old homes and townhouses and you name it. I’ve both owned and rented.
This website seems like the best place to post updates about what’s going on, so stay tuned… As much as I avoid and dislike drama, there are people in my life who thrive on it and insert it into my daughter and my life whether we like it or not.
