hindsight

i was all balls deep in recounting the past year's dain bramage last night -- on the heels of throwing myself a Psych Ward Release Party at the restaurant where i pretend to matter. only my attorneys, the children's teachers, and my one lone, close associate were in attendance.

one year ago today i was set free from all that encumbered me.

i learned from the law office gate keepers (also in attendance) that they weren't sure what to do with the crazy sounding, but clearly articulate woman calling from the parking lot of an emergency room because she had to decide between admitting herself to a hospital for crazies or a law firm for crazies with money (also known as "eccentrics").

apparently, i sounded crazy that day. but something in my crazy made enough sense to them to take the only NO-assets divorce in the firm's history. gatekeeper #1, whom i will refer to as Fred-with-a-Y passed me along to the firm's triage nurse, Karen -- gatekeeper #2 -- who passed me along to the managing partner -- The Hook -- rather than hooking me up with the ubertall namesake attorney of the firm for whom I called in the first place.

The Hook brought me on board as a novelty item and quite frankly, think I nailed that role, tyvm, LPH. i am proud to say that i think she is my friend. my kids are in love with her kid, and foo has asked repeatedly "to see [the hook]". her rodeo-riding, bull-castrating understudy associate, formerly known as T. Justice, will henceforth be known as Tatebot. that guy can fake deadpan like someone's paying him six-figgas to do it. probably because they are. and i think i might love the guy. he's a good egg, and not in a humpty dumpty kind of way.

they did the best they could for me, but i am the only client they've ever had who only had one out of three evaluations/recommendations returned to the custody evaluator -- a man who decided he knew me well enough after meeting me for a total of 5 hours for the insignificant sum of $7500 to decide that i am an unfit parent.

as i mentioned, over the past couple of months or so i have been righting my self-perception, self-diagnoses, self hatred, self doubt and selfish tendencies. i have taken ownership for the demise of my marriage -- i walked out (before the po-pos showed), afterall.

the manny poignantly and possibly even prophetically told me that he was able to exact all this suffering upon me because "you will be fine. you're always fine." when he said that, i thought to myself, "but how? without you how will i be fine?"

and the truth is that until i started doubting myself based on others' misunderstanding or distrust of my MO, i thought i was pretty amazing. give the interwebs an opportunity to lob diagnoses and a free-for-all of negative assertions at you, and you would doubt yourself, too. or maybe not. i'm not you. i'm me. and i'm probably not at all like you, even though 9 out of 10 custody evaluators would probably say otherwise.

i made a fatal mistake in asking 3 people who had known me well, but seen me with the children most recently to send in evaluations on my behalf. two of them failed to produce. which may or may not have given the impression to the custody evaluator that i have no support, no friends, no people. which is pretty effin true. but that's because i'm usually fine and i don't ask for much in the way of help