What It’s Like To Be Between a Rock & a Hard Place

rock and a hard place

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I’m no stranger to sticky situations, and I always manage to solve them. In fact, I enjoy solving complex problems, and it’s a reason I Like being in marketing and helping solve their business and marketing problems. And even managed to help others with life problems, as I’m no stranger to those as well. Something I’m deeply interested in and has always been is psychology and as far as work goes, consumer behavior, crowd psychology (also known a sociology sometimes), and human behavior in general. There’s no end to the fascinating ways people will think and behave, in different situations. The biggest factor, in fact, that will change people’s behavior is if they think they’re being evaluated by someone or many people or if they think they’re alone or free from observation, and judgment. That plays into integrity as well as a lot of other things, but that’s not the point of this little article.

The focus of this bit of writing is to explain where I am in relation to my daughter, who is essentially my entire family at this point, and the almost satirical events I’ve been a cast member in the past few months. It’s amazing, to the point I’m chronicling it here. It’s something I’m sure I’ll do my best to remove from my memory once it’s all over with, which hopefully will be soon. I doing my very best to call an end to the insanity as quickly a possible, despite having 3 people and a host of bureaucrats, and a judge working directly against me and my efforts.

roack-you-hard place

 

I’d like to disclaim that I’m not writing about this for sympathy, to place blame for anything on anyone else, or for any purpose other than to tell a story of absurdity. I’ve already posted a pretty long retelling of how I got here and what’s going on legally and with my daughter and ex-wife. I don’t want to air my dirty laundry or have my life wide open for the world to marvel over. So I put the post up temporarily so the right people could read it and learn about it because it’s quite a tale. and then I removed it. If there’s someone who’d like to read that, please just let me know.  But it’s not for the general public.

That out of the way, here’s where I find myself sandwiched. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, please let me know. Otherwise, I’m just doing everything I know how to do and at the mercy of time and a judge who’s more interested in going on vacation than handling cases. Much less talking to me. You’ll see what I mean.

May 3 was when this began. Today is June 29, 2021. My daughter’s 6th birthday is July 11. I’m scheduled to have her spend it with me this year, as her mother and I share joint custody. It’s especially important to be with her on her special day this year because last year her mother wouldn’t allow me to speak to her not the phone, facetime with her, or send a present to her mom’s house on her 5th birthday. Which I’ll never forget, and may help explain what I’m up against.

As another disclaimer(I’m full of disclaimers these days, thanks to having everything I do be monitored by someone it seems. See my Totalitarian post) is this:

I do not mean to disparage anyone, most of all my daughter’s mother. She’s very sensitive to being disparaged. To the point of spending money on a lawyer to get me to take down an internet post about her that she felt was disparaging. She has a court order me to take something down that mentioned her. Which is something that you will see plays into where I am now. We’ll get there, I promise. But as I’ve explained to her, when you go through life doing crappy things and being a bad person, you disparage yourself. It simply becomes impossible for anyone, much less the target of someone’s hatred, to discuss them without what they do and are and the way they act seeming awful. Because it is. I wish I could help that, truly, but my efforts have been futile. So please keep in mind my retelling of these accounts are factual, and not my opinion. /disclaimer

OK, so back to the beginning, May 3, 2021. Ex-wife shows up at my house unannounced and uninvited in hysterics, calls the police, alleges assault on my behalf, as if, to file impromptu EPO AND file criminal charges to foster a false narrative for which there is no actual evidence. Think: Jussie Smollet.

What this means is that I am only able to see my daughter 1 hour a week now, under supervision, in a tiny dark room, which I have to pay $40 an hour for.

If that’s not bad enough, she and I cannot discuss the future, the past, what’s going on, and why we’re having to meet 1 hour a week now, or anything at all, really. I’ve been written up about 6 times already for responding to my daughter begging me to talk to the judge so she can come to see and stay with me again, and that she’s been begging her mother, who hasn’t ever even shown up to court yet, 2 months later, to speak to the judge as well so she can see me. For telling her I would and I’m working on it, I was written up. “RED!” is yelled by the Supervisor anytime something “inappropriate” is brought up. Please note: I have never mentioned court, the judge, or lawyers to my daughter because it is inappropriate to talk about with a 5-year-old. However, it’s clear the whole thing has been blamed on “the judge” who now bears all responsibility for managing our family, as explained to our daughter by the mother. This violates a court order, which I’ve filed a motion to have her held in contempt for, incidentally. As well as 4 other violations. We’ll see if she bothers to show up or not.

This brings me to the hard place I’m in. Because of the EPO I cannot speak to the mother. She supposedly has an attorney, who I’ve sent a TON of file paperwork to as well as tried to initiate a conversation about the case(s) with. He won’t respond, and hasn’t shown up to court either. This makes me believe she hasn’t been paying him, and he’s not bothering to tell me, or send the filings or anything to the mother, because technically, he’s not representing her, but won’t tell me.

So I’ve got that juggling in one hand. In the other, I have a judge who seems to hate me. after granting the EPO and Order of supervised access, she won’t speak to me, despite setting myself on the docket 4 times.

The first time I appeared before her, after she made me wait 4 hours and called very LAST, she said she couldn’t do anything because the case was Ex Parte, meaning she couldn’t rule without the other party not showing up. She sent me packing wondering how I’m supposed to ever get anything accomplished if the Petitioner and her attorney won’t bother to show up for court. So I had to file a motion to redocket the case later. There’s only 1 day each week this can be done, and the court’s backed up(probably because judges will only hear cases 1 day a week? Maybe?)

SO that sets things back. I show up July 24which was the next date they could get me in. Since she made me wait 4 hours the last time, I brought t ap ack of crackers with me this time. I waited 2 hours, from 11 am to 1 pm, until finally I was hungry and went to the restroom to wash my hands to eat my crackers. I came out ate them and waited until 2 pm and everyone else had been called. I explained to the bailiff I hadn’t been called, and apparently, he called me when I was in the restroom washing my hands for 15 seconds.

He goes into the courtroom, where you can’t enter unless called, tells the judge I’d been there but was in the bathroom. She says “too bad.” and sends me packing again.

This means I have to file ANOTHER motion to redocket the case. So I do, and the earlest I can get back on the docket is July 8, because the judge is going on vacation.

I filed a motion back when I file the other motion to redocket to have the mother evaluated for child neglect. This is because the very first visitation I had with our daughter, showed up with stitches in her forehead covered by a bandage. By court order, the mother is supposed to provide documents and alert me to any such physical injury, which she didn’t. Violation of another court order.

She also had scabs along her spine, which she said was falling down the stairs. She also told me she had roaches, bugs, and mice in her bed and house and couldn’t sleep in her bed. She was being made to sleep in the basement. She told me a lot of horrible worrisome things which I won’t get into, because of “disparagement.” So I filed that motion so that we could solve this issue.

I had that docketed for yesterday, July 28, and showed up at 11:30. Again, I was the VERY last person called at 1:30. Mind you I had a very important job interview scheduled for 2, so I was getting nervous about that as well. So the judge told me she had looked at my motion and remanded it because I didn’t have legal ground, and that I should hire an attorney.

Also, mind you this was during what is called “motion hour” which is held each Monday at 11:30. Everyone who showed up physically (a lot of people did the virtual show-up via Zoom) was sitting in the courtroom, including me, so I got to hear a lot of interesting cases. So, as I was called DEAD LAST, the judge sent me packing again.

The things that got me were this: by 12:30, the judge began complaining of what a long day it had been. She moaned over and over that she had been there since 8:30! And was SO tired. I’ve never heard so much complaining, especially by someone like a judge, as she sat there on her elevated bench, at work, in front of so many people. And it may possibly be excusable if it were a volunteer job, that she didn’t want. But I am sure she’s making around $300k for that job and had to work hard to be put there, with many others who also wanted that job. So complaining about tbeing there for 4 hours and being so tired, when I KNOW she’s about to go on an extended vacation because it’s what’s causing my redocketing being put off until July 8, is unreal.

And today during my 1-hour weekly supervised time with my daughter, who STILL has stitches in her head, and said they were bleeding the day before, she tells me her mother’s planning on taking her out of the state, which she has to tell me all about according to the court. But what was more eyeball popping was that her mom is moving. She’s moving them out to live in a camper. She, our daughter, and I guess her dad, who’s been living and chainsmoking with her, and the mother has taken up smoking (again) in her vast wisdom. She obviously doesn’t remember how had it was to quit 11 years ago. Not to mention what an ugly, disgusting, expensive, unhealthy habit it and what a bad example and environment it creates for our daughter.

These are all explames of what is the end game here. Do whatever is he rtop priority, which is herself and maintaining a sense of control, even if it’s imaginary, and keeping me as far away as possible from her and our child so that her parenting and lifestyle cannot be For obviously reaons. evaluated. And these ends will be reached by her at any cost, even if that cost is our child’s best interest, well-being, future, welfare, and health, both physical, emotional, and mental. All there for the usage to reach her highly distressing and self-centered goals. And for the cherry on top, she’s bragging to our child about how much money she has and how wealthy she is as if that isn’t inappropriate and relative in the first place. The whole thing is awful.

Luckily the supervisors that I pay to oversee the 1 hour meetings between my daughter and myself spend 98% of the time on their phones. So I was able to whisper to her that I had been seeing the judge, I’m working on everything as hard as I can, and everything will be alright. Something the world we live in now forbids.

 

 

 

 

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By musgrove

Storytelling content strategist who likes to code, design, and write. And dogs and tech. And pizza. And 3-D printing. And woodworking. And... http://linkedin.com/in/wdpop

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