So here I was, semi-sedated in a hospital bed, rather a humble end to such a great plan but somehow inevitable given the events to date. The problem with being treated for depression is that you very quickly see what an idiot you were, and while they tell you it wasn't really your fault, its small comfort to either you or those you may have hurt.
To say the least I was amazed to see my father as I awoke, and even more surprised when rather than being his usual self, he was supportive and understanding. I know I have dumped on him to a certain extent in these missives but at this time it was really good to have him there.
After some discussions with the doctor, he took me home and made arrangements to go back to Ontario at least for a recovery period. Unfortunately to do this I had to tell Allison and say goodbye to my kids, both things were not appealing but as my father was present Allison was all understanding, sweetness and light, it was not sincere but at least it made things easier. I made arrangements for the dog and my house to be looked after and left for Ontario.
To save time later I will tell you now that when I returned a month later, my dog had been given away, all my jewelery was gone, as were part of my photo albums, and some of my furniture. No need to say that Allison had gone shopping in my house while I was away and I never got anything back except some of my photos.
Anyway, in blissful ignorance of the above I was back home and about to enter the maelstrom.
When I arrived at my parents home my sisters and mother were there, and initially were very comforting and supportive but literally a few hours later, the trap was sprung and the attack began. The word attack may be too strong, it was kind of like a post mortem intervention, and while later I resented the fact that they were in essence kicking a dead horse, at the time I just took it, after all I couldn't argue they were right. I had hurt everyone, let everyone down and generally screwed up and they didn't even know all the facts. After the initial onslaught and upon their realization that not only was I not going to argue but couldn't, they gave me a list of things I had to do and doctors I had to see and let me go to bed.
Now dear reader I am going to tell you something that I did not believe at the time. Out of the blue, my mother got a call from Karen, she for some reason had been thinking about me and decided to get in touch and called my parents for the number. You must realize that I had not spoken to her in at least ten years and now in my darkest days she simply calls, it was amazing. I was later to learn that my mother let her in on what had happened and after I spoke to her on the phone for a few minutes she announced that she was coming to visit. In outlining these events I am still amazed at how the circle turns and how that very old connection was always so strong.
Karen arrived and stayed for a few days and it was wonderful, I could actually relax and forget about the pain for awhile. We talked and I filled her in on the events of my life that had led me to this point and she filled me in on her life as well. She and her husband had separated about a year before and although they were still good friends they acknowledged that at this point in their lives they wanted different things, he wanted to settle down and she was still searching for her own personal answers, which at that time was eastern philosophy and yoga.
We discussed our relationship and just how blatantly strange it was, we even discussed actually getting together which with little discussion was acknowledged by both of us as unlikely, we were too different, she too adventurous, me too conservative and frankly at that point, damaged.
We spent our time together and as usual her presence did wonders for me until she had to leave until the circle brought her back again.
I spent most of my month in Ontario going to doctors, trying to organize my life or at the very least trying to figure out what my next step was going to be. I could go back out west and stay alone, clearly not a good idea, or I could return to Ontario and try to start again while fighting the law society battle long distance and dealing with the separation from my children. After alot of thought and tears I decided the only reasonable thing I could do was to move back to Ontario and try to put the pieces back together however this would involve a great deal of organization and even more pain.
A the end of my month it was decided that my mother and I would go back to British Columbia to get things organized for the move. We arrived and after I discovered everything that was missing and got the little I could back we went to work preparing for the move. Put the house up for sale, packed up furniture and possessions to transport back and hardest of all, spent time with the kids trying to explain what was happening and why they had to stay with their mother. I should say at this point that as McKenzie got older she and her mother did not get along, it was generally a running battle, mostly because Allison took her anger at me out on this little girl so leaving her in this situation was not easy and to have to listen to her beg to come with me was even harder, but at that point it was the only thing I could do if not the best. I did at least still have the presence of a legal mind to amend the separation agreement to ensure my joint custody and access in Ontario and as such was able to promise the kids that I would see them soon.
After we got everything organized the day came for my mother to fly back to Ontario and I was going to drive back in a truck with my friend Bob with all my stuff. I want to take this opportunity to talk about Bob, he was the only thing I got besides my kids out of my marriage to Allison. You see he was the husband of one of her friends and as she is not much on long term friendships without benefit, they kind of stayed with me after the separation. Bob and Nicole were then as they are now my best friends. Bob is not only the kind of guy that would give you the shirt off his back or drop everything in his own life to help a friend, he actually did it. With little or no notice and without being asked he dropped everything and volunteered to drive across the country with me. It was a week long trip and again the presence of this friend that I had failed to initially share my problems with during this week did wonders to help me face the unknown and the separation from my kids.
So now it has been approximately two months since I awoke in the hospital and I was back in Ontario, with no plan, no money, no clue and alot of rules from sisters and parents. As an aside I should tell you that all during this period my family had been there, organizing, paying and planning, however something had changed, it didn't seem like much at the time but it has never changed to date. During my life when leaving or coming home from a trip, or at Christmas or other appropriate occasion my father would give me a hug, he gave me one in the hospital the day he arrived, however, on this return home with Bob, when we came through the door, he gave Bob a hug and thanked him and then walked right past me. I know it sounds whiny but to date, and it has been years he has never given me another hug and frankly has only shook my hand on a rare occasion.
Bob stayed for a week and then flew home with my undying friendship which lasts to this day. After he was gone the real work started and the pain that got me here just got worse and while I was with my family I discovered I was still alone until something unbelievable happened as the circle turned again. One night during my second week home, and I should point out that my parents now lived full time at the cottage which had been expanded, there was a knock on the door which I answered, and there stood Chrystal, a little older but as beautiful as she was the day I first saw her. To say the least I was completely stunned, but eventually asked her in at which time she said she only had a minute and just wanted to say a few things to me and leave. We went downstairs, she sat me down and after a few minutes of trying to get her nerve up, she told me that she had heard what had happened, you may recall I mentioned that there are downfalls to living in a small town when you have a big family, and that she wanted to tell me that she loved me, had always loved me and that when I was ready she wanted to be with me. She then kissed me and left. To say I was shocked is an understatement of almost biblical proportions, I was literally dumbfounded and sat for the rest of the night thinking of the implications of what she had said. Needless to say I wasn't ready for that now, to put it mildly I had more baggage that a southbound freight and was as twisted as a New York pretzel, but it did give me something that I did not have at the time, hope.
I continued going to the doctor as I should have done years before and taking the pills with all that entailed. The problem with actually going to the doctor is not only do you have to rehash the dumb things you have done and find out why, you learn about things you probably knew about and didn't want to acknowledge, specifically, the relationship with my father. Through this entire disaster he had been there for me, at the very least financially but on the day that he came into see my doctor I learned something I didn't really want to know. After the session in which my father met with the doctor alone, the doctor then wanted to see me which given that I was not scheduled seemed rather ominous.
The doctor sat me down and after a pause asked me if my father had helped during this crisis and I advised him yes a great deal and especially financially, he then told me that was all I could expect in that my father had not only said but argued forcefully that despite everything I had gone through, including the hospital, there was no such thing as depression, that it was baloney and an excuse for the weak. He had stated that I was an embarrassment however despite this he could not be seen publicly or within the family to abandon me and because of this he had helped me and would continue to help me as much as he could. Talk about the good, bad and the ugly, not really something anyone wants to hear. The doctor then told me that emotionally speaking whether I went back west or stayed here as far as my family was concerned it would make no difference.
Dear reader I included this portion of my experience in the hope that anyone that has gone through this type of depression or is going through it can realize that there will be people, even those that you love that will not understand or will not want to understand, they may help or they may not, what you have to remember is that the future may change them or if not there will undoubtedly be someone to come along and fill that space in your life, you just have to look, whether it be a relationship or a support group, someone is out there. For me it turned out to be Chrystal.
We had been periodically meeting, having lunch, sometimes dinner and as the fog in my head cleared it became apparent that the love I had known was still there and for once I was able to see it and with luck I wouldn't screw it up.
About this point it also became apparent that living at my parents home was not going to last long, my rescue was essentially complete and while no one said it, it looked like they all had decided they didn't have to be nice to me anymore so things were getting a little tense. It turned out my cousin had a house for rent, he gave me a good deal so I moved in, a couple months later Chrystal moved in with me and we started again.
This is not to say that everything was now hunky dory, far from it, I still had no job, no money no apparent future and I can tell you it was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life when in order to apply for assistance I had to tell the worker that my last job was as a lawyer but the few hundred dollars he could qualify me for was necessary for me to live. However, every step up is a little closer to getting out of the hole I dug for myself. What I am trying to say is that the road back or out was as humiliating as the fall down but I had to keep going no matter how bad the pain or embarrassing the situation.
For once I was lucky because through all of this Chrystal was with me, she as much as anyone saved my life and helped me get through these struggles and the ones to come.
I wish I could say that we had reached the happy ending, but as implied above this was just the beginning, a good beginning, a hopeful beginning, but there were still issues to deal with and a future to get organized. This is not to say things were not alot better, they definitely were, with Chrystal by my side I felt safe for the first time in years. So I got down to it.
I managed to get a job as a consultant with a local company, using some of those university courses on the sociology of work and business that I thought I would never use. Chrystal got a job at the same company and things started to pick up, at least I had an income and we could afford to eat. Next I kept dealing with the law society and with the help of some past colleagues and thousands of dollars things slowly started to turn my way, I wasn't going to come out unscathed but I eventually would come out of it and take consequences for only the things that I was responsible for and not the groundless allegations of those trying to take advantage.
However there was still my children and that was the part that hurt the most. The access for the first Christmas, other than the initial wrangling that I anticipated with Allison, twas not really a problem and there were no real serious problems getting the kids to Ontario. In hindsight having them with me again while a great joy was very hard to take because I knew I had to send them back. After Christmas the real problems began, not for any good reason but just because now without the thousands in support I had been paying, she could not afford her lifestyle I think she decided to take that out on me the only way she could, so the battle began.
It started initially with a phone call from McKenzie, crying on the phone with her mother and grandmother heard in the background telling her what to say loudly enough that I could hear. I didn't say they were smart. Anyway as McKenzie repeated their words as ordered she said that she loved me but didn't want to come and visit me anymore. I simply told her not to worry she would see me again and I would look after things at which point she said thank you Daddy and that she loved me.
Now dear reader I will let you in on something most people don't realize when dealing with custody and access matters, it costs as much in time, money, effort and pain to start an action for custody as it does to enforce access and not only are the procedures basically the same but if you do not win the custody application you will undoubtedly be awarded the access you also wanted. I would also suggest at this time that if you are the husband or wife with the day to day care of your child and have to give reasonable access, don't play games with it unless the best interests of your children are truly the issue. You see, I left my kids, I didn't want too and it hurt terribly and constantly, but given the circumstances I believed I had no choice, couldn't fight the fight at the time and that because of all of this that it was in the best interests of my children. I had come to accept this unpleasant situation, all Allison had to do was leave things alone and not interfere with the access, however, whether she couldn't resist or whether I had become the source of all disappointment in her narcissistic mind, she just had to try to deny me access to my children. As a result of this I started my action for custody, with, much to my great joy, Chrystal's blessing and support.
I will not go through the endless battling and maneuvering in this action but suffice it to say it involved the following, she denied access and moved the children to the US without notice, she was ordered back to Canada by the court and told not to take them back, which she did on the same day of the court hearing, she was ordered back again and misled the court by telling it that the kids were now in school and their US immigration status had been confirmed due to her marriage to an American citizen, she then got an order that she could take them back to the US on the condition that I would have access that Christmas.
I did have the access at Christmas which we all enjoyed and after New Years, Chrystal and I took the kids back to the airport, filled out the customs papers and put them on the plane, we waited until the flight left and drove the hours home. Upon arriving home the phone rang and it was the airport telling us that the plane had been stopped and the children removed from the flight, so we drove back to the airport and picked up the kids. Now I had filled out the customs papers in accordance with the information that Allison had provided to me and the court however as we were in the process of discovering, this information was not true and in fact the kids had no immigration status in the US, thus I now had at least temporary custody of the kids and life was really looking up.
We got the kids enrolled in school, got McKenzie counselling for the emotional problems she was having after dealing with her mother, and Connor some counselling and treatment for some behavioural problems and learning disabilities. Things settled in life was good but the battle continued and while McKenzie was as happy as she had ever been, Connor missed his mother which for a small boy was not unusual although painful. We finally travelled to British Columbia for the final trial, however with the mediation of the child counselors it was agreed that McKenzie woud live with us and Connor would stay with his mother. I should point out that this decision was based on Connor's psychological attachment to his mother and his best interests resulting from that, not his actual biological connection or lack thereof to me, as stated earlier to this day he is not aware that he is not biologically mine. This decison was hard to make and in the long run maybe not have been the best one in terms of Connor, but we saw him numerous times during the year and to date speak to him weekly on the phone.
McKenzie, blossomed in eveyway except in her relationship with her mother, I basically had to force her to visit her mother and when she spoke to her on the phone the conversations were short and stunted. McKenzie never really disclosed much of what happened in her life with her mother while I was gone to me she did tell Chrystal alot in confidences that Chrystal has never betrayed, except to tell me that it was not pleasant time for my daughter. In any event she settled in and eventually began calling Chrystal, Mom and when she reached the age that she could refuse to visit her mother she did. Now I tried to disuade her from this course of action but it was not helped by the fact that her mother quit talking to her and refuses to talk to her to date no matter how I try to broker some kind of peace between the two.
While all of this was going on I had resolved the law society matter and Chrystal and I finally reached the point where we could buy a house of our own. Life was hard, money was tight but things were good , I was making a comeback, slowly and with lots of help and more specifically with my second chance at love and life with Chrystal.
