I Thought She Was Smarter Than That
So, yesterday, I’m home early from work with Some Kind of Plague and I notice my daughter is putting small articles of personal belongings on the sofa. This is one of the “staging” areas we use when we are getting ready to go somewhere for a period of time. I recognized the activity and I asked if she was going somewhere. She said to me, “There’s no easy way to tell you this ….” and proceeds to say that she is moving back in with the father of the baby.
Yeah, the guy who got kicked off the soccer team as a kid due to fighting. The one who was court martialed while in the Marines for picking a fight with an officer while off-duty. The very same guy who has, in the course of the one year they have been together, managed to have been involved in having the cops come to her apartment three times - and no, she’s never had the cops at her home before meeting him. The one who abuses her cat when she’s not home. (How do we know? Just by watching the cat when he came near it. Hissing, growling, spitting - not normal behaviors in a cat who, only moments ago, was sitting peacefully on the couch until Knucklehead walks through the front door.) The one who, when she asked him what he would do if she and the baby moved away from Sacramento without him replied “I will hunt you down and kill you.” That’s verbatim, folks. The same Knucklehead who said he would come and help her fix her car but instead takes her to a shooting range and tells her he’s bought two more handguns. My daughter doesn’t like guns and has never handled one and has no interest to do so either.
And you know what she says? Well, I know how this is like the honeymoon phase in an abusive relationship and I’ve been careful to keep my distance with him (she must mean emotionally cuz they’ve been going out regularly for the past month or so) and we’re working on stuff …he’s willing to work on some things …..
I am not convinced. And while I wasn’t excited about having a new baby in my cramped home, I’m really unhappy that she thinks things will just work out with a little talking between the two of them. Dude needs serious counseling and his head is nowhere near the intersection of Introspection and Self-Awareness let alone the plaza of Significant Personal Change.
I wonder how she can be so open-eyed when it comes to other people’s relationship shortcomings but she is blind to her own. She experienced first hand a verbally and emotionally abusive long-term relationship in high school. She talks about knowing the DV cycle and is aware of the honeymoon phase and yadda-yadda-yadda but cannot seem to see she is in that ugly pattern once again. I realize she wants a family situation for her baby and she is painfully yearning for a meaningful relationship. But the guys she drags home have all been unemployed or underemployed slackers, most of whom did not have their own vehicles or residence when they moved in with her. There’s something about the black leather clad “bad boy” image she is attracted to (just look at the folks she hangs with per her photos on My Space, fer instance) that she is drawn to like a moth to flame. I cannot understand it and I cannot do anything to make things different. She is her own person and I have to respect that. But I’m also her mother and I worry for her safety.