My daughter is a bright, beautiful, smart-ass, child. I love her more than she will ever realize, well at least until she has a child of her own. She is quick witted, loves her friends and family, loves to play soccer and her violin, loves animals, tolerates school, she does have a couple classes she really enjoys. All and all she is growing to be a mature, kind young lady who isn't afraid to burp better than most people we know. For the most part I believe she handling the divorce, new relationships her father and I have started, and everything else fairly well for a 12 year old. When her father and I divorced we both agreed to put our daughter 1st and let her have a sense of control in her life. Her father, the man that he is, has not really done this well. He has no problem letting her make decisions, but the decisions he expects her to make are not really ones she should have to make. Recently there has been some schedule conflicts, which happens, not really a big deal on the surface. The real issue is it appears her father is choosing his new girlfriend's daughter over his own daughter. Now the girlfriend has been in the picture for about a year and 1/2. My daughter generally gets along with her and her daughter. A little back story...
The girlfriend and my ex talked about the girlfriend moving from upstate New York to Texas, were we live. Fine, great, wonderful.. except after the divorce and because of the financial situation I was in, the ex stayed in the house. I have been awarded the house, but I was not capable of affording it just yet. I was going to have my mom move in to help, it was going to be tough, but I figured I would work it out. That is until the ex decided he didn't want my mom living with our daughter in the house. (A whole neither story on that..) Any way, after many discussions and fights about it, it was decided I would move into an apartment for about a year so I could improve my financial situation. And it was ok for my mom to live in the apartment with me and my daughter. Granted, my daughter technically still lived at the house, but she is at my apartment just as much as she is at the house. So basically it was ok for my mom to live with my daughter in the apartment, but not in the house.. never understood that logic, unless there was another completely different reason for it, which I wouldn't doubt considering who my ex is.. So it was decided that I would move out in February and she girlfriend and her kid would move to Texas during spring break in March. The main reason I agreed with the situation was because I was afraid the ex would cause issues when Blue got out of prison. Plus I was weak and still intimidated by the ex, by the way he could manipulate any and every situation to fit him best. It has been so hard to stand up to him and demand what is due to me legally.
So the plan is for me to move to an apartment, let our daughter get used to the situation, then have the girlfriend move down in March. Yeah, that didn't happen. I moved out at the beginning of February and the girlfriend moved down mid February. No adjustment period what so ever, plus our daughter missed about a week of school so the girlfriend could move down to Texas. Again I was not happy about it, but too weak to take a stand out of fear he would do something to stop our daughter living with me and Blue when he came home from prison.
The girlfriend is here, her daughter is here and they are all living in my house. It is all kinds of fucked up, but moving on. The plan was for the girlfriend to find a job when she got to Texas. The economy being the way it has been for the last few years, it wasn't easy for her to find a job and get settled in my house. That I understand, it is difficult to find a job. Here is the kicker, they decided she couldn't find a job in her field of home mortgage underwriting, something a long those lines anyway (yet if you look there are lots of opening for that type of job), she would go back to school and the ex would support her and her kid. The worse part is I was never "allowed" to go to school because we couldn't afford for me not to work and the ex wasn't willing to make it work so I could go back to school. In fact the 2 times I tried to go to school did not turn out so well. The 1st time was right after high school, I enrolled in a community college to start taking the required classes so I could transfer them to ASU or something. Anyway, right after I enrolled, the ex convinced me to un-enroll so we could get a bigger apartment so a friend of ours could move in with us. OK, I am all for helping someone out. Needless to say the friend moving in didn't work out so well and we ended up being stuck in a bigger apartment without a roommate. We made it work, somehow. So no school. A few years later, we had our 1st house together, things were going fairly well financially so I looked into going to a broadcasting school. I went down did all the stuff I needed to do until it came time for financial aid. Being married, I had to get information from the ex and he had to agree to it.. I don't really remember but I had to call him for something. I had talked to him about me going and as far as I knew he was in agreement. I didn't just go down and it do without talking to him, I didn't surprise him with this. So I call him from the financial aid office for whatever reason. He started asking me what I was doing, etc. I told him and he told me "no". I was on the phone, balling my eyes out, begging him to let me do this. His excuse was there was no way I would be able to get a job after school because he knew a couple of guys from work who had been through school for communications and they couldn't find a job and it was hard to get a job. Well duh, I knew that. But because of these guys, I was not able to school because he believed them more than he believed in me. Over the years, I knew I should have left him then..
Back to present day. The girlfriend is enrolled in school and not working any where. The ex is supporting her and her kid, paying me child support and paying all the bills. I have no idea how he is managing it because I know what he makes and I know what the bills are for the house. When I found out she was going back to school (yes she as a degree in something), I was completely torn apart and hurt beyond words. My poor daughter was the one who told me, it was more of us discussing how things were at the house and she mentioned it. She didn't know what to do when I got mad. I explained it wasn't her fault and I am glad she told me, but I had to figure out how to deal with it. So I did, sort of. Which brings us up to last Tuesday. The girlfriend's kid is sick with some sort of abscessed tooth, or something. Can't go to school because of fever and pain, don't blame her one bit, I wouldn't go to school either or have my daughter go to school. Anyway, the girlfriend had my ex come home from work to "work from home" so she could go to school and he could take care of her kid. Now understand, he rarely did this when our daughter was sick, I was always the one to miss work to stay home with her. Honestly I never minded anyway. So it is 8:15 AM, I am taking my daughter to school (just left the house so I knew the situation with the girlfriend's daughter). I see the ex driving back to the house and I ask my daughter, "What's your dad doing?" She replied "He is going home so Anne can go to school". I was pissed, but I didn't really want to show it to my daughter. She knew I was upset, but I try very hard not to say negative things about her dad. It isn't the right thing to do. I am also talking to Blue on the phone. Basically I hold it all together, drop her off at school, and say good-bye to Blue. I start to drive to work and everything comes out. On top of all of this, it has been almost a year since our divorce and the ex still has not fix the paperwork for the 401k. He has some typos in the original he needed to correct. So I let him have it, in as calm of way as I could through texts. I told him I was hurt and angry that he is being supportive of his girlfriend but never was of me and hurt that he still hadn't taken care of the 401k issue. He apologized, which really meant nothing to me and we agreed to go to court Friday, which turned into Monday because the judge was not available Friday. It has finally been taken care of..
Back to the original point.. my daughter plays soccer and the girlfriend's daughter plays soccer, different age groups. Some of their games conflict a little bit. My daughter had a bye week on the 12th. So they made plans for the girlfriend's kid birthday party. Well my daughter had a rain out game and the scheduled the make up game on the 12th, which now conflicts with the birthday party. I asked the ex about it and he said something about having to ask one of the other parents to take our daughter to the game (I originally planned to be out of town visiting Blue). I said something about I will rearrange my schedule.. Later during my daughters game (that we were currently at when I asked him about the make up game) I got to thinking about what the ex said. So I sent him a text asking if he planned to be at our daughters game on the 12th at all, he replied with "probably not". That is my issue with the whole thing. He is choosing to be with "the kid" rather than figure out how he could be, at the very least, at part of his own daughter's game. Now he is making my daughter choose between spending time with him and going to her soccer game. It is bullshit choice she should not have to make and that is why I am so angry. I even told him that these are the type of things our daughter was going to remember and he still doesn't get what he is doing. Or maybe he does and doesn't really care. He has always done what he wanted regardless of how it effects those around him.
