Set Me Free, Why Don’t You?

 

 

Though my life was hell with Don, trying to get free of him was a mind-boggling task.  At first, all he did was complain about being sick and not having a working vehicle.  When he realized that I was serious about not returning unless he changed his ways, he did everything he could to make my life miserable.

Within a few weeks of moving in with Sarah, my son woke up with a temperature of 102º Fahrenheit.  She and I took him to a doctor.  By the time we got there, his skin was mottled.  When the doctor removed his socks, his legs were blue.  The doctor referred him to a medical center for testing.  I had to give my sister permission to decide his medical care, so I could get to my first real job in eight years.  She had every other Friday off and luckily that Friday was one of them, so she didn't miss any work.  The doctor thought at first that my son might have pneumonia, but it was only a very bad case of asthma.  My son had developed a technique for shallow breathing, which fooled even the doctor until she made him inhale deeply.

I had my father call Don and ask him to send some money for our son's medical expenses.  His response according to Dad: "Well, I'm sick too!"  He complained again about not having transportation, but according to one of my friends, the van was now running and he was able to call her from his job.  He said he couldn't send us any money for our son's medical expenses.  My father said that Don sounded totally wrapped up in himself. 

I called Don three times after that and he finally had me confirm that I was living with Sarah.  We never had a current address for her in our address book – only a post office box, so he had no idea of our exact location.  The first time I called him at work because he convinced a few people that he had no transportation and was on the verge of having no income.  Yet he was able to call one of my friends from his work and he was there when my dad called, though he wouldn't return the call.

So, the next Monday I called just to satisfy my curiosity.  I want just to leave a message, but the receptionist put him on the line.  We talked some.  He complained about being still sick, but when I suggested he go back to the doctor, he said that he was getting over it.  Then he complained about not having transportation.  I said I was sorry about that and left it there.  He said that he was going to throw all the "trash" out of the house.  From the emphasis he gave the word, he was planning to throw away anything of mine he can get his hands on.  He didn’t though. I told one of "our" friends what I suspected and she not only talked him out of it, but also talked him into sending the money for our son's medicine - not that the amount he sent covered that, but it did help.  He sent a postal money order registered mail and put my maiden name on the outside of the envelope, though the postal order itself had my married name on it.  Not once during the phone call did he asked about the kids, though I did give him an update on what was going on medically with our son.  Even though he didn't asked, but I wanted him to realize how serious things were.  Of course, he complained about being sick again.  True to his narcissistic nature, he wanted his needs to be met first.

A few days later my daughter asked to talk to him, so I dialed the number.  After she talked to him, she had my son come over and talk.  I had asked my son earlier if he wanted to talk to his dad and had said no, but with the phone there, he went ahead and talked to his dad.  He didn't show any the resentment he displayed when he talked about his dad to his aunt - he just told his dad what he had been doing at school.  Then he asked his dad if he wanted to speak to me.  We did the "Well, only if they want to" bit first. Then I went and took the phone.  I could tell he was lonely, but he didn't ask me any questions or say anything really, he just listened to me talk about my job and such.  I felt like a heel for wanting a divorce, but then I realize that he hadn't done anything but sit there.  He hadn’t even dialed the number.  We were the ones doing all the effort and one spouse, even with help from the children, cannot hold a marriage together.

A few days later, my daughter asked again to talk to her dad.  This time either she didn't asked if he wanted to talk to the rest of us or he said no, because after she finished talking to him, she hung up the phone.  I didn't hear her answer any questions about her brother's health or anything about how we were doing.  However, I was busy taking care of some house cleaning and may have missed something.

An interesting side note: during this time of little to no contact with Don, my fibromyalgia went into remission.  He always said if we could find the source of my anxiety, the fibromyalgia would go away.  I wonder if he realized that he was the main source of my anxiety.

Around the same time, the brother in-law who almost left his wife and I had a talk.  He hadn't told their mother that he and his wife had been in contact with me since I left with the kids.  I told him that I didn't mind him sharing my side of the story if he thought it would helps matters, but if it created a rift in the family - not to bother.

He was the one who informed me that Don told his mom that he had only stayed with me for the sake of the children.  I don't know what else Don said to his mother because my brother in-law changed subjects on her when she casually brought it up.  I was a bit surprised.  I would have expected her to harp on it - heaven knows, she harps enough on one of my sister in-laws and her husband - but she just let my brother in-law change the subject.  It may explain why she told Don on more than one occasion in the past three years that he was lucky to have me for a wife.  Of course, that was before she realized I would actually leave her son. 

My brother in-law put his wife on the phone and I remarked to her that it sounded like Don was hoping that I would get so fed up that I would leave.  She agreed with me.  . I had promised the kids that I would give their dad some time to repent of his ways, but there didn't seem to be much point to it after that phone call.  All those strange little hurtful things he had done during the past seven years finally make sense.  He wanted me to leave and to leave in such a way that he would appear guiltless.  The marriage was fine until I needed him to be there emotionally and then he decided he didn't want to be in a relationship anymore.  But he couldn't let everyone find out what a selfish immature bastard he actually was, so he stayed and tried to drive me insane. 

I was so angry when I finally figured this out that I wanted to slug him.  Here I was trying to create a strong family and now I realized that there was nothing I could have done to make him see reason.  He, who promised to be my greatest ally, instead became my worst foe.  Words could not describe the betrayal I felt.  If he had died right then, I would have rejoiced.

            In a fiction story, my life would have been a great deal less stressful after leaving Don.  In truth, it was anything but.  In the two years it took to get the divorce finalized, my life was a living hell.  Being a single working parent is one of the most stressful things in this universe, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  I could not begin to count the times I said I hated my life.

            For one thing, in my dependent state, I had to rely on my parents again.  It took a bit of quick talking and some veiled threats to get that relationship to the point where I could more or less trust them to watch my children for a few weeks here and there.  For another, people just like kicking you when you’re down.  I swear that some of them think it’s their solemn duty to make sure you are punished for failing.  What’s more, many of your friends and acquaintances will desert you like you have the plague.  People just don’t like being around someone who is going through a crisis, be it a divorce, losing a child, or recovering from a physical attack.  Some of it may be a lack of knowing what to say, but I think a great deal of it is not wanting to face the fact that bad things happen in life.

            I had to remind myself that a few years of total hell was better than suicide or a life of never ending misery.  And it was years.  Narcissists do not give up their claims easily nor their need to punish.  I had to have faith that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

            But the tunnel doesn’t show mercy.  There was some in my life, for there were always people who did understand and the occasional opportunity that went my way.  But as I got ready to cut the ties to Don, I also had to face what being married to him had done to me, physically as well as emotionally.

            I went to take my daughter to her dental appointment and got a surprise when we got to the dentist office.  Knowing that I was placing my children before myself, they went ahead and made an appointment for me too.  They took tons of x-rays and had the sad task of telling me that after years of neglect, the only teeth I had worth saving were the six in the bottom front. 

I was devastated and angry.  If Don had let me get the crowns I needed six years before, I wouldn't had cracked those teeth, which caused the other ones to go like a chain reaction. Yes, it would have been expensive, but nothing compared to what now faced me.  His mom had even offered to lend us money to take care of our dental needs and he turned her down.  When I went ahead and found a dentist for myself, he threw a fit and said the man charged too much and was just a con artist.  Even threatened not to pay for the parts of the examination not fully covered by insurance.  I insisted that he go ahead and find a dentist, because I didn't want dentures - they may be common in his family, but they're not in mine - especially at my age.

He found one who suited his idea of cost.  I guess Don never heard the expression "You get what you pay for", because I had to get the kids work redone by other dentists and only two of his fillings were still in my mouth at that time.  Even with the cheap dentist, Don wouldn't let me get the crowns. "Insurance will cover only 50%, and we can't afford them,” he said.  Before I had always assumed a “yet” at the end of that sentence.  I never fully grasped the possibility that he never had any intention of ever getting them. 

Of course, the dentures are my fault too.  Depressed or not, I should have taken better care of my teeth.  I should have fought to get those crowns, instead of retreating into the background and hoping we'd get around to it soon.  I should have stuck up for myself and asked my mother in-law for the loan she offered.

A few weeks before this, I talk to a friend and found out that Don had not only cut down the apricot tree that had died last summer, but the healthy one also.  I realize he doesn't like apricots, but I would think that finishing the main bathroom or putting up the fence would have a higher priority.  Looking back, it occurred to me that whenever Don is upset, he needs to destroy something.  Once he systematically destroyed the long sword that he had been working on for months – the very one I had brought out to chase that one guy away.  When I asked he why, he just told me that it had a flaw and was worthless.  It, too, had committed the second greatest crime against a narcissist.  Perhaps another narcissist would have just tossed it aside, but Don wasn’t satisfied until he has turned it into an unrecognizable mass of twisted metal, even though I had a friend who was interested in buying it from him as it was.

Don punished himself too.  He once shaved off a full beard and buzzed his head because he felt that our friends thought he was a terrible husband.  At the time I had bronchitis very bad and a chemical burn inside my throat from the red dye in the cough drops he insisted I use, instead of letting me get the clear methol ones I prefer.  When he could had spent his time better by helping me with the meals and stuff while our friends were there, he disfigured himself.  And this person says he doesn't have any emotional problems.  Can we say denial?

I'm the exact opposite.  When I'm upset, I feel the need to create something.  The few times I've actually destroyed something for the sake of releasing my pain, I had to talk myself into it for several days and I still felt guilty about it afterwards.  Drawing mandalas and making web pages are two of my favorite things for releasing stress, as well as my writing.  And there is nothing like a visit to a craft store when I’m upset to trigger impulse shopping.

I have read that people can have a mix of two or personality disorders.  If that’s the case, then Don is also a borderline Antisocial Personality Disorder, but the narcissistic traits are the strongest.

The week before that fateful dentist appointment, I was hit by a commercial vehicle.  Don had given me the impression that he had cancelled the insurance on the truck, but when I called our insurance agent I found out he had lied about that and the insurance on the van.  What he did cancel was the health insurance on me.

Two weeks before I could meet the residence requirements in Sarah’s county, Don filed for the divorce, which meant that I had to be the one travelling three hundred miles for the hearings.  The date showed that he filed the day after I called and informed him of my teeth and the accident.  In addition to him suing for complete custody of the children, he also filed a restraining order against me.  I quickly found a lawyer in the town the papers were filed.  When she finally got a hold of his lawyer, she found out that they are going to claim that I am dangerously unstable.

If I was so unstable why didn't he try to find out where I took the kids when I left?  Amusingly, according to the court documents, we were gone a week before he noticed we were gone.  True to his miserly nature, Don got himself a criminal lawyer low on clientele to represent him.  If the poor man ever practices family law again, it will be a miracle, because my lawyer and I made him look ridiculous.  For the temporary hearing, Don had told him so many lies and half truths, that what solid evidence they did have against me was quickly viewed as only to be expected from someone living with such an unreasonable person.  His lawyer even told my first lawyer that his client was not the smartest man in the universe during a recess.  When my second lawyer tried to get him to explain why Don kept changing his mind on the final settlement, he broke down on the phone and told that lawyer his client was insane.  He stopped representing Don soon after that.

His lawyer had tried to drop the "dangerously unstable" claim and just go for incompetent parent, after he had met me in person.  The judge was really busy and told our two lawyers to work it out before the trial.  And they did try.  Don wanted to have it set up where he would only pay child support when I had the kids and that I would pay him child support when he had the kids, but the judge nixed that before we even started to negotiate.  We had gotten things down to normal visitation rights, the child support, and were even working out some sort of system to ensure each of us were keeping our places clean, when suddenly Don got disgusted and insisted on a hearing.  I saw him walk down the hall red-faced, narrowed eyes, and lower lip pouting and told the two friends with me that whenever he had that look at home, it usually meant he was going to hit the roof.  At the time, I was almost giddy with relief, because even though it wasn't a perfect solution, it was better than I had hoped for as far as child support.

My lawyer said it was when he saw we were happy with the agreement that he became mad.  I suppose I shouldn't had been surprised - a friend pointed out something similar to me before, and I know I have occasion mumbled the suspicion that he couldn't stand to see me happy - but it was wild to see it manifested in this way.

That first hearing was very funny looking back on it now.  I organized so much information in actual documents for my first lawyer that her job was extremely easy, especially with Don whining about how I left him when he was on the verge of death and how he couldn’t help me with keeping the house clean because his feet hurt.  But he couldn’t go to the doctor, because the he knew the doctor couldn’t help him.  His own lawyer cringed when Don, himself, brought up my fibromyalgia and admitted it affected my health in such a way that keeping a house up by myself was not possible.  He tried to claim that I did not take care of my fibromyalgia properly and that proved I was not a stable enough person to take care of our children.  What was amazing was that thing he was claiming I was doing wrong, was actually something that fibromyalgia suffers are often counseled to do and the book he brought with him said so, as did the flyer I got from a health food store during the recess for lunch.  On a side note, being forced to deal with Don on a regular basis again made my fibromyalgia come back with a vengeance.

Don made all sorts of other allegations of how I neglected the children and let them run wild without any discipline.  We had letters from their teachers and testimony from a church member about their behavior and I'm sure the judge found it hard to believe that children that were so undisciplined at home could have such a sterling reputation for being sweet, helpful, and hardworking at school and church.  I had always said that Don was the only person in the world who thought our children were terrible. 

I wish I could say I was calm and collective on the stand, but I wasn't. Don't get me wrong - I wasn't a raving maniac, but it was obvious halfway through my testimony that if I could have strangled my husband's lawyer, I would have.  I was rather disgusted with myself at the time, but looking back on it now, I did very well.  I stood up for myself and even caught his lawyer a couple of times in slips of the tongue.  He tried to make me look as if I blamed my husband for everything (health and house), but I firmly stated, "We were equally at fault," and glared at him.  When he insisted it was my duty to let my husband know where my children were, I said "No."  I even asked him if he would sit by and wait for someone to tell him where his children were if they were missing.  What's more I did all of this with conviction and authority in my voice, without getting flustered at all.  I was rather surprised at myself.  It was a shame I wasn’t as composed at the final hearing, but considering I still won, I can’t be too hard on myself.

At the temporary hearing, the judge was firm with both of us in her ruling, though she looked at my husband more than me.  She was definitely not happy when she inquired about my fibromyalgia medication and my husband broke in and said I couldn't get it refilled because he had removed me from his insurance two months after I left.  You see, in the state we lived in, it is a big mistake to remove a spouse from health insurance without their consent or proof of divorcement.  She didn't give him a lecture, but the look she did give him could sour milk.  My lawyer said that even though she didn't show it on the bench, back in her chambers, the judge was disgusted with my husband, and actually had some admiration for me.  In the end, we basically had the same agreement the lawyers came up with before the hearing.

Of course, Don couldn’t stand to have his actions dictated to him by the courts, a charge he tried leveling at me during the final hearing.  He postponed his summer visitation with the children for a week, only letting me know a couple days beforehand that he could make it then. 

My brother went me to make sure nothing happened.  We are not certain, but we think that Don was planning to switch vehicles with me, using the fact that he brought a bunch of stuff to give me in the van and it would be easier than transferring it.  He was not happy to see my brother, who let him do all the loading, while I bought the kids lunch at the nearby Dairy Queen.  I told him that he didn't have the right to choose what I get or don't get, but he insisted that he was being fair.  Of course his idea of fair was that if there is two of something, he got the one that works and I got the ruined one.  

The thing I was insistent about was getting the washer and dryer.  I was going to have the kids most of the time and his work had a service clean his uniforms, so I needed the washer and dryer more than he did.   By this time, I had moved out of Sarah’s house and into an apartment of my own with washer/dryer connections.  When I came to see the kids during the summer visitation, I told him that he could keep the freezer and gave him my reasons for me having the washer and dryer.  He got that stupid pout on his face and told me because I had the truck and the computer that I had more stuff of value than he did, and basically I should be grateful for what he was giving me.  He had the TV, VCR, camcorder, dining room table, our nice large tent, a 100 slot CD player, more videos than you can shake a stick at, all the good stain glass equipment, the refrigerator, and tons of tools, power and otherwise, and so forth.  He wouldn’t budge.  In fact, he kept the freezer anyway.  But a few months later, some church members gave me their old, high quality washer and dryer, so I ended up with something better.

When I pointed out that he had over $3000 worth of tools (a figure he had given me about seven years before this) in the garage, he started calling me a lying bitch.  I told him he was delusional.  The kids were inside the house, but I found out later that the kitchen window was open.  Anyway, instead of backing down and trying to keep him calm, I took a step towards him and stood my ground.  It shocked him, but I kept eye contact and tried to keep myself from yelling too loud.  I tried to keep my arguments logical, while he called me a lying, lazy, fat bitch.  And I told him he was delusional several times.  A friend was there the whole time.  She said that I did use more logic, but I sounded about as uncontrolled as he did.  Oh well.  He did sound pretty stupid when he said that he didn't pick up after himself because I wouldn't let him.

My friend also saw something that I didn't.  While I was keeping eye contact, I did see him look over my shoulder and freeze for a short moment.  She said that he had made a fist and was pulling it back when their eyes locked.  Then he immediately let the arm relax.  She is positive that he would have hit me if she hadn't been there.  She was also worried about me saying goodbye to the kids while they were in the house with him.  I told her that Sylvia was already in charge, marched up to the door, rung the bell, and said goodbye to my children.  After all, as she has pointed out before, he likes people to be scared of him. 

My mother in-law was there for two weeks. The in-laws who I am talking to said that my husband asked her to come down because he found watching the kids to be very emotionally draining.  The kids still went to the babysitter while she was there.  When I asked what Grandma did while they were at the babysitter's and Dad was at work, they shrugged their shoulders and said probably watch TV.  I think she probably did some cleaning, but I can't know for sure.

The next time I called to talk to the kids, Don was all sweet and reasonable.  I kept thinking, "Give it up.  It's too late now, you goofball."  Someone once told me I had a calming effect on some people.  They may be right, but in reading up on abusers, I have found that most of them have this “blow up and act sweet” routine.

Near the end of the first summer visitation, Don sounded very irritated when I called.  Then my daughter got on the line and shouted, "We're coming back next week to live with you again!  Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!"  I'm sure that didn't do much to help his mood.

Even though I knew I wouldn't have any time to myself and they were going run me ragged, I was ecstatic having my children back with me.  In their absence, I became moody and despondent.  The one thing that kept me from completely crumbling was continuing what I begun in therapy and working on my emotional issues through my own writing and doing the exercises in The Mythic Path by David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner.

Don began to play games with the status our house.  He kept threatening to let it go into foreclosure and even lied later about actually doing that.  During that summer, he bullied me into signing an agreement to let someone lease our house until he can qualify to assume to loan.  I tried to get a hold of my lawyer, but she had retreated into her own little world and hadn’t even filed the ruling from the temporary hearing as the judge had asked her to.  None of my calls were returned.  Not knowing what else to do, I drove all the way back there to sign it, instead of Don meeting me at the halfway point and trading custody of the kids there.   It was if he was doing everything in his power to make me spend my money.  He wouldn’t feed the kids before I pick them up, so they were always hungry when I got them.  During the whole divorce procedure, only once did he even come to the town I lived in.

And the things he said to others to win sympathy.  He was making more money than me and yet he would insist that he was on the verge of poverty.  When the children and I were with him, I was a housewife and didn’t have any income.  How could he be so broke without me there?  He even told the kids that he would be living out of the van after he moved out of the house.  I was treated to several verses on how horrible Daddy’s life was for many months.

Finally I got another lawyer to take over my case and get the divorce going again. He apologized for the profession and said the word on the grapevine was that my old lawyer is having personal problems.  This lawyer says that my husband should be the one calling us - with enough notice - and making the appointment for visitation.  Until then, I had been doing the calling. 

That’s when the Don began playing cat and mouse.  He would ask for a change in the final papers and as long as it didn’t take custody from me, we gave it to him.  I was even willing to give up the back child support he hadn’t paid, in exchange for complete custody.  What little he had paid, he made me signed for, but those papers disappeared when I insisted on a copy of them.  It was a shame, because the itemization on them was pretty funny – especially the “insensitivity bonus” he gave me once, which still didn’t add up to the amount I was suppose to get.

            During this time, he played games with the children too, by trying to get them to sneak stuff he has given us back to him.  I found out because they offered to do the same for me.  I told them no.  Then, they told me that their dad wants them to bring back a multi-tool that he said they stole.  When I called him about it, he claimed that one of the kids must have taken it accidentally and he needed it for work.

About this time, it was all I could do to keep from hitting the roof.  The silly thing cost maybe $45 and he had a few thousand dollars worth of highly specialized, high quality tools.  He's a machinist with micrometers and calipers.  He has more screwdrivers than all the members in my family combined.  He has more sockets than most pawnshops.  He has at least 3 heavy-duty pliers.  And he had to have this little thing?  And if he needed for work so much, why didn't he say something sooner?

The kids were upset and they both swore they didn't take it and I assured them that it wasn’t their fault.  I initially thought he was referring to another tool that he had given us, but then I found it tucked in a flap inside their suitcase.  The kids didn’t even know what it was when they saw it in my hand.  I seriously doubt they put it there.  It all struck me as some ploy, like his taking the children over to someone’s house and then having them bad mouth me in their presence.  In the end, I mailed it back to him with a very stern letter, which I copied to my lawyer and told the kids that if their dad wants something from us, he needed to talk to me himself.

By this time, I was told that the papers were just waiting for Don to sign them.  I was hoping that this meant he had finally decided to stop making my life miserable, but in the back of my mind I must admit I knew better.  Instead of signing the papers, he called and said that the Lord has told him that we need to work things out.

The Lord told me that two years before and I acted on it and got us into counseling. Why wasn't he listening then?  I asked what he was going to change to make things better and he said that he would stop working overtime and spend more time with the kids.  When I asked about our relationship, he said, "Well, the way I see it, you didn't want to be in a celestial marriage and weren't willing to do what was necessary to achieve one."  He went on to say that it was my decision alone to stay at home and that I didn't do anything at home.  I pointed out that he was the one who stopped going to church, and he said, "I stopped going to church because I felt trapped in a marriage that was going nowhere."  There were other things said - he accused me of doing the very things he had done - and I told he that I wasn't going back because he was still the person I had left last year and that he hadn't changed.  He said that I wasn't listening to him, but my own prejudices.  I started quoting what he had just said back to him and he started accusing me of lying to him since the beginning of our marriage.  Now, when he said that in court and was asked to explain, he said that I lied because I said I was going to do certain things (which he never specified) in the raising of our children and that I didn't do them.  How many people do you know who actually raised their children the way they thought they would before they had them?  It's not like I promised someone they could finish their college and swore we would do anything to make it happen, only to not even consider the possibility later.  It's not like I swore that we would never have anything over a PG-13 rating in the house and then start buying R movies and bringing home porn magazines.  He, on the other hand, did.

 I did thank him for making it clear that our relationship would never work.  I hung up on him when he again accused me of lying with an edge of hysteria on his voice.  It was so unreal.  He wanted me to come back to the same relationship we had before – this man who told his family that he would never take me back under any circumstances.  My lawyer was confused about my husband's actions, but assured me that Don couldn't stretch the process out forever.  It just felt that way.

Then I got to the exchange point for visitation one Friday almost an hour later than I normally did.  Not that I'll be able to convince him, but it wasn't on purpose - the traffic was that heavy going out of the major metropolis I lived in.  Anyway, he was madder than spit when I did show up and lost his temper.  Accused me of playing silly games (and what does he call not giving me the copies of the "receipts" he had me sign and saying to the kids, "And what will you give me?" when they asked for some of their videos to take back?), called me a worthless bitch, and said that I was going to go to jail for being in violation of federal law - all in front of the kids.

Getting the kids to him late is not a federal offense last time I checked, but not paying child support is and at that time he owed over $2000.  I think someone pointed out to him that he was in danger of going to jail and his brain couldn't handle the concept, so he twisted it in his mind that I was the one in the wrong.  I did point out that it was a lot easier to be arrested for not paying child support than it was for being late, which obviously didn't help matters.

Anyway, while he was screaming at me, I told him that I was through arguing with him and that he could speak to my lawyer from then on.  He yelled that he didn't have to speak to my lawyer and went back to calling me a worthless bitch and saying I was going to jail.  I quietly went back to the truck and pulled out the envelope containing the note I wrote earlier and handed it to him without a word.  He just tossed it in the back of his car - I don't know what he actually thought it was.  We both went back to our vehicles and he screamed out his window "Worthless bitch!" as he drove off with my children.

I was rather upset by the whole thing, and before I left town, I called my lawyer's 800 number and left a message with the answering service he has detailing the encounter. I cried a few times on the way home and it was almost 2 a.m. when I finally got back to my place.  I accidentally hit an opossum on the way back.  I thought it was some rolled up newspaper until it looked up at me with glowing sky blue eyes.  I tried to swerve, but I still hit it.  It may have lived - I don't know.  I was on a back road because of a detour and it was extremely dark.  When I got home, I sent this message to my online friends:

 

Three hours ago I let a man, who was screaming that I was a worthless

bitch at the top of his lungs, drive off with my children ...

Is it just me or is something very wrong with this picture?

Anyway, I spent the weekend worried that he was going to lose his temper with the kids or run off with them.  Luckily, he was very nice to the kids and got them back to me on time.  Either he realized he stepped over the line that Friday night or had convinced himself that I would be going to jail for not complying to his wishes and thought that this would make me look even worse.  He also had our son hand back the money I gave him at Thanksgiving to get those "receipts" copied and mailed to me, with the message that he didn't know where the papers were anymore. 

It was about this time that I found out about the Narcissistic Personality Disorder and discovered Sam Vaknin’s web site.  Not only did it explain and validate what I had experienced with Don and my mother, but it prepared me for the other bizarre things Don did from that time until the divorce was finalized.  I will spare the detail account.  I’m sure I have given more than enough for another narcissistic enabler to identify with.