I’ve been away from my ex (well, as away as I can be since we co-parent,) for 3 years, divorced for 2. I truly love being on my own with just my kid. I’m able to be civil to my ex and let shit roll off my back; we’re not married, his bullshit’s not my problem to fix anymore. I’m in a better place than I’ve been in for 15 years.
But, sometimes something happens and I get dragged back to that life. And it pisses me off.
The other day the kid and I finally cleaned out the garage. It was full of the ex’s stuff and I finally got sufficiently sick of not being able to pull my car in, and my town had a cleanup day, so we started pitching shit.
The garage was done and I felt great about getting all of that out of there, so I told the kid we should do the shed next. She says “yeah! We can bring my Monster High Dolls back in and put them in the extra bedroom!”
Now, she’s nearly 14. She’s not going to play with those dolls. But the Monster High collection was something her and I both loved and enjoyed together, and it always pissed her off that my ex one day declared to her (a few days after her 9th birthday,) that she was too big for them and they needed to go to the shed.
She and I begrudgingly agreed, but I told him to make sure he used a good tote with a good lid so they didn’t get messed up out there. He said he would and that was that.
So here we are the other day looking forward to getting those dolls out and going through them. We get to the shed, open the door, and guess what is dumped out all over the shed, stained with 5 years of snow and rain and blown in dirt and leaves, fucked up matted hair, parts missing? The Monster High dolls.
I almost cried on the spot. My kid was furious. As I looked around, I see that not only are the dolls ruined, a lot of my Halloween and Christmas decorations are scattered and fucked as well. Stuff that I loved.
My kid says “how did the lids come off? How did the totes get spilled all over?” I know how they did. When I kicked out the narc, he dug through the shed looking for his camping stuff and apparently ransacking all our stuff to be a dick. I don’t say anything to my kid, I just shrug my shoulders, but she’s too smart for that and says “it was goddamn Dad, wasn’t it?”
I know it’s just stuff. But shit, man! I didn’t touch a thing of his until 3 years had passed and he had taken the majority of things he wanted or needed. He was ALWAYS like this with MY things. He never respected anything of mine, (smashed my grandma’s antique piano bench with the vacuum, used my clothes to sop it up when the toilet overflowed, BS like that,) But those dolls weren’t just mine. They were mostly the kid’s. It felt like a big FUCK YOU traveled through time to find us.
It’s sucks that even though I’m free of him, I’m never going to be all the way free.
If you’re at this point, thanks for wading through all that bullshit. Writing it out made me feel a little better.