Time for the "full story"...
A few of you have asked about what transpired last week that necessitated me to overhaul my internet presence. While I have spoken to a couple of folks over the phone about the matter, I felt it would be much more efficient to put it here for all of my friends to view if they so chose.
The complicated "skinny" of the matter concerns my "niece", a young woman I have known and served as a parental figure to for many years. Part of the reason for my role in T's life is due to the fact that I was good friends with her parents (or so I thought) for over two decades. While T had a troubled relationship with them, it wasn't until their marital breakdown and subsequent divorce, that they allegedly became alternately abusive and neglectful to her. I was unaware of their treatment of the children until recently due to geographic distance. I remained friendly with her father in the aftermath of the explosive divorce, while T's mother has long since disappeared. Some of you may remember me talking about T when she had a problem with DCF a couple of years ago after a false abuse report regarding her oldest children. The incident was resolved rather quickly, and she gave birth to another child a few months later. Incidentally, she is now 23 years old and has five children. As also mentioned before, her husband is in the armed services, but their marriage has had many ups and downs, including discovering that he had undermined her to his shipmates and had carried on a tacky extramarital affair that nearly got him court-martialed. T chose to stay in the marriage for economic reasons, and while I was not thrilled about the decision, I understood the predicament she was in. Trying to be helpful, I urged her to seek marital counseling and incrementally pursue vocational training or other forms of higher education, regardless of how the marriage turned out.
In the past three-to-four years that I had been a full-time mentor to her, T has had a full parade of problems occur, including health issues, problems with making and keeping friends on base, troubles with her childrens' school, myriad family conflicts, Girl Scout troop in-fighting, etc. I tried to guide and encourage her, especially since she had such poor role models growing up and claimed that she wanted to break away from her family's bad behavioral patterns. However, the problems and drama were unceasing, and several were usually due to her poor judgement. I tried to be helpful, yet honest and firm, but new situations would consistently crop up. I didn't mind listening to T and giving my input, because she constantly swore to me that she was making efforts to turn everything around. Having been in a nasty series of pickles myself in the past, I was empathetic to just how insurmountable and persistent certain problems can seem to be. Usually such issues have to be slowly chipped away over time and require patient support from loved ones.
Over the past few months, T started to complain to me about another mother on base that she had befriended. The woman was in her 40s and had a young boy that T would babysit on a regular basis. Eventually T had to stop because the child was a bully and physically abusive to her children. In addition, the woman was also in an abusive relationship, but had refused to deal with it, and had proven to be thoroughly unreliable about following through on agreed-to babysitting duties. I advised T on multiple occasions to just politely avoid the person and not have any more dealings with them. I insisted that she needed to focus her energy solely on her marriage, her kids and bettering that situation, rather than focusing on others. Recently, T told me that she was finally through with the person and was having nothing to do with them.
Fast forward to last Sunday (SuperBowl Sunday). T and her husband were invited to a party and dropped off their five kids with a babysitter who claimed that they also had two teenagers over that were going to help look after the children. A couple of hours later they received a call from the babysitter on their cell phone, who asked them to pick up their kids earlier than originally agreed-upon because the sitter's spouse was coming home early and they didn't want the kids there. (BTW, T had given this person $100-plus to look after the kids and the matter of the spouse's schedule never came up previously.) They arrived to pick up the children, and the youngest one, a little over a year old, emerged with a bloody nose. After they took the kids home and got into better light, T and her hubby saw bruises all over the child's face. In the meantime, they questioned the other children and discovered that the babysitter had kicked out all of the children, including the teenagers, so they could watch television. The teens took the kids to their place and one of them had pushed the toddler out of their way to watch television, with the little one falling into a piece of furniture. The rightfully-hysterical parents raced to the emergency room and called the police on the way there. When they arrived, the attending physician noticed bruises on the child's leg and ordered an X-ray to ensure that there were no broken bones. Luckily, it turned out the toddler was okay, with the facial trauma being superficial, so the child was sent home that same evening.
The police met T and her husband at the E.R. and were ready to press charges against the teen until they met up with the youth and their parents. The offending kid was confused and remorseful, and their mother was hysterically crying, so the cop took pity on them and opted to not pursue the matter, which enraged T. Instead, T discussed the possiblity of making a formal complaint of neglect against the original babysitter to DCF.
Now, the entire time when I was told this tale, the identity of the babysitter was not revealed to me. T called me to relate the news of the previous evening and prefaced the story with, "I just want to let you know that I am aware that I made a huge error in judgement..." Of course I was initially very concerned and supportive when she told me the story. However, once she starting going off about contacting DCF and accidentally revealed WHO the original babysitter was, I verfied the identity with T and then quietly snapped inside.(If you guessed the psycho, uber-risky neighbor, you would be correctomundo!) I outwardly maintained my cool, deciding that losing my temper would serve no purpose, but informed her that while I was glad her child was okay, I couldn't take this chronic conduct anymore and needed a break. I repeated this several times over her protests that she realized she made an error in judgement. How many times had I heard these excuses in the aftermath of several fubars? Had she ever truly taken responsibility for her mistakes and learned from them? Now a child had been injured, and it was sheer luck that it wasn't something far worse. To me, T was partly to blame for the incident because she knew the strong risk potential but decided that going to an on-base party, even if it was to power schmooze on behalf of her husband was more important. Additionally, while I may not have been a big fan of her hubby, I'm pretty sure that if he had any inkling as to how troublesome the potential babysitter was, he would have vetoed the idea from the onset.
T seemed shell-shocked, but understanding when I got off the phone and went off to class. But a couple of hours later, when I checked my email, there were two UGLY letters, one from her and her supposedly-estranged father. Both of them were full of sanctimonious venom and insults, with hers containing a great deal of profanity. I tried calling T's cellphone, but her husband answered and when I tried to inquire and discuss the matter with him, he got all "I'm not going to talk behind my wife's back..." Yes, such a superior comment from the guy who had been supposedly talking smack about his wife to anybody who would listen (including his captain) for at least a year prior to his recent infidelity; an incident that was accompanied by him scheming with his erstwhile mistress to push his wife out of their home and subsequently dump his marital and paternal responsibilities onto his parents. At least until T caught on and nipped the situation in the bud.
I then sent polite email replies to T and her father, and offered, at least to the father, an opportunity to discuss this matter like an adult. To T, since she claimed that she never wanted to speak to me again etc., I responded with basically, "No problem, it's obviously you don't want to accept responsibility for anything, much less getting over your addiction to a toxic lifestyle. Have a nice life." However, after I later discovered the snide commentary directed at me on the father's Facebook profile (Hyperbolically claiming that I was a long-time "supposed friend" that "pwned" his poor little girl in her moment of need while his grandchild lay injured. You know, the same daughter who has called me many times over the years upset over how he has belittled, dismissed and ignored her in favor of other siblings.), I changed my mind, and simply unfriended/blocked him from my Facebook. Apparently T had unfriended me just prior, but I went ahead and blocked her as well, in addition to cutting off every form of shared communication we had. All I had done was politely ask for a time-out, and instead I was treated to "WWIII: Hypocritical Drama Llamas Gone Wild".
To be honest with y'all, I don't know what else I could have done in this situation and remain honorable. While I concede that my timing may have been off, this entire family has been a wildly dysfunctional trainwreck for years, full of backbiting and quarreling amongst themselves. Perhaps it was just a matter of time before these people made me their personal pinata, which they have done to others that were close to the family. The paradoxical part of this is that while she has called me numerous times hysterical and crying when friends or family members allegedly insulted, screamed at, or stole from her, she was always supposedly at a loss as to how to handle those situations. Everytime I urged her to take the high road and detach with love and dignity if necessary. But as evidenced by her vile nasty-gram, those were apparently yet ANOTHER set of lessons she's failed to grasp. Presumably my remaining rational and exerting some self-control was a waste of time and effort. I guess being abusive and emotionally unattainable earns more respect and consideration from her.
All these years I had hoped that T would escape the cycle of toxic behavior, just as she claimed she wanted to desperately; but it seems that she just drawn to creating her own special brand of unhealthy dynamic. After this incident, considering the rude and ignorant remarks her father made to me in his letter, and even her husband's antipathy, I now have to wonder whether or not she has been manipulating everyone in this situation all along and for how long. Heck, I have to ponder how much she's being manipulated and used by others as well. I also have to consider in retrospect the possibility of how much of a deceptive instigator her father was with several different scenarios involving other long-time friends over the last decade. I guess I'll never know, and quite frankly, I no longer care. While I have no doubt that T loves her children and has her own odd set of good intentions, she is a troubled soul. I cannot enable and witness the damage any longer, including when it negatively impacts my personal life and wellbeing, which it has. Of course I am saddened about ending a relatioship that endured for over two decades, even one that may have been superficial and one-sided, but enough is enough.
However, it no longer matters; it's all over now, and I have to face the fact that I may have trusted and cared for a group of Jerry's (as in "Springer") Kids. I've definitely learned my own hard lesson about selecting, and dealing with, members of my "family of choice". And if T thinks for one second that she can try to weasel back into my existence after everything has blown over,forget it. I am done. D-O-N-E. I could have possibly forgiven her malicious email, but once she pulled in others, particularly her father, game over. T is on her own now, and I wish her the best of luck. With the folks she currently has "backing" her, she's going to need it.
The complicated "skinny" of the matter concerns my "niece", a young woman I have known and served as a parental figure to for many years. Part of the reason for my role in T's life is due to the fact that I was good friends with her parents (or so I thought) for over two decades. While T had a troubled relationship with them, it wasn't until their marital breakdown and subsequent divorce, that they allegedly became alternately abusive and neglectful to her. I was unaware of their treatment of the children until recently due to geographic distance. I remained friendly with her father in the aftermath of the explosive divorce, while T's mother has long since disappeared. Some of you may remember me talking about T when she had a problem with DCF a couple of years ago after a false abuse report regarding her oldest children. The incident was resolved rather quickly, and she gave birth to another child a few months later. Incidentally, she is now 23 years old and has five children. As also mentioned before, her husband is in the armed services, but their marriage has had many ups and downs, including discovering that he had undermined her to his shipmates and had carried on a tacky extramarital affair that nearly got him court-martialed. T chose to stay in the marriage for economic reasons, and while I was not thrilled about the decision, I understood the predicament she was in. Trying to be helpful, I urged her to seek marital counseling and incrementally pursue vocational training or other forms of higher education, regardless of how the marriage turned out.
In the past three-to-four years that I had been a full-time mentor to her, T has had a full parade of problems occur, including health issues, problems with making and keeping friends on base, troubles with her childrens' school, myriad family conflicts, Girl Scout troop in-fighting, etc. I tried to guide and encourage her, especially since she had such poor role models growing up and claimed that she wanted to break away from her family's bad behavioral patterns. However, the problems and drama were unceasing, and several were usually due to her poor judgement. I tried to be helpful, yet honest and firm, but new situations would consistently crop up. I didn't mind listening to T and giving my input, because she constantly swore to me that she was making efforts to turn everything around. Having been in a nasty series of pickles myself in the past, I was empathetic to just how insurmountable and persistent certain problems can seem to be. Usually such issues have to be slowly chipped away over time and require patient support from loved ones.
Over the past few months, T started to complain to me about another mother on base that she had befriended. The woman was in her 40s and had a young boy that T would babysit on a regular basis. Eventually T had to stop because the child was a bully and physically abusive to her children. In addition, the woman was also in an abusive relationship, but had refused to deal with it, and had proven to be thoroughly unreliable about following through on agreed-to babysitting duties. I advised T on multiple occasions to just politely avoid the person and not have any more dealings with them. I insisted that she needed to focus her energy solely on her marriage, her kids and bettering that situation, rather than focusing on others. Recently, T told me that she was finally through with the person and was having nothing to do with them.
Fast forward to last Sunday (SuperBowl Sunday). T and her husband were invited to a party and dropped off their five kids with a babysitter who claimed that they also had two teenagers over that were going to help look after the children. A couple of hours later they received a call from the babysitter on their cell phone, who asked them to pick up their kids earlier than originally agreed-upon because the sitter's spouse was coming home early and they didn't want the kids there. (BTW, T had given this person $100-plus to look after the kids and the matter of the spouse's schedule never came up previously.) They arrived to pick up the children, and the youngest one, a little over a year old, emerged with a bloody nose. After they took the kids home and got into better light, T and her hubby saw bruises all over the child's face. In the meantime, they questioned the other children and discovered that the babysitter had kicked out all of the children, including the teenagers, so they could watch television. The teens took the kids to their place and one of them had pushed the toddler out of their way to watch television, with the little one falling into a piece of furniture. The rightfully-hysterical parents raced to the emergency room and called the police on the way there. When they arrived, the attending physician noticed bruises on the child's leg and ordered an X-ray to ensure that there were no broken bones. Luckily, it turned out the toddler was okay, with the facial trauma being superficial, so the child was sent home that same evening.
The police met T and her husband at the E.R. and were ready to press charges against the teen until they met up with the youth and their parents. The offending kid was confused and remorseful, and their mother was hysterically crying, so the cop took pity on them and opted to not pursue the matter, which enraged T. Instead, T discussed the possiblity of making a formal complaint of neglect against the original babysitter to DCF.
Now, the entire time when I was told this tale, the identity of the babysitter was not revealed to me. T called me to relate the news of the previous evening and prefaced the story with, "I just want to let you know that I am aware that I made a huge error in judgement..." Of course I was initially very concerned and supportive when she told me the story. However, once she starting going off about contacting DCF and accidentally revealed WHO the original babysitter was, I verfied the identity with T and then quietly snapped inside.(If you guessed the psycho, uber-risky neighbor, you would be correctomundo!) I outwardly maintained my cool, deciding that losing my temper would serve no purpose, but informed her that while I was glad her child was okay, I couldn't take this chronic conduct anymore and needed a break. I repeated this several times over her protests that she realized she made an error in judgement. How many times had I heard these excuses in the aftermath of several fubars? Had she ever truly taken responsibility for her mistakes and learned from them? Now a child had been injured, and it was sheer luck that it wasn't something far worse. To me, T was partly to blame for the incident because she knew the strong risk potential but decided that going to an on-base party, even if it was to power schmooze on behalf of her husband was more important. Additionally, while I may not have been a big fan of her hubby, I'm pretty sure that if he had any inkling as to how troublesome the potential babysitter was, he would have vetoed the idea from the onset.
T seemed shell-shocked, but understanding when I got off the phone and went off to class. But a couple of hours later, when I checked my email, there were two UGLY letters, one from her and her supposedly-estranged father. Both of them were full of sanctimonious venom and insults, with hers containing a great deal of profanity. I tried calling T's cellphone, but her husband answered and when I tried to inquire and discuss the matter with him, he got all "I'm not going to talk behind my wife's back..." Yes, such a superior comment from the guy who had been supposedly talking smack about his wife to anybody who would listen (including his captain) for at least a year prior to his recent infidelity; an incident that was accompanied by him scheming with his erstwhile mistress to push his wife out of their home and subsequently dump his marital and paternal responsibilities onto his parents. At least until T caught on and nipped the situation in the bud.
I then sent polite email replies to T and her father, and offered, at least to the father, an opportunity to discuss this matter like an adult. To T, since she claimed that she never wanted to speak to me again etc., I responded with basically, "No problem, it's obviously you don't want to accept responsibility for anything, much less getting over your addiction to a toxic lifestyle. Have a nice life." However, after I later discovered the snide commentary directed at me on the father's Facebook profile (Hyperbolically claiming that I was a long-time "supposed friend" that "pwned" his poor little girl in her moment of need while his grandchild lay injured. You know, the same daughter who has called me many times over the years upset over how he has belittled, dismissed and ignored her in favor of other siblings.), I changed my mind, and simply unfriended/blocked him from my Facebook. Apparently T had unfriended me just prior, but I went ahead and blocked her as well, in addition to cutting off every form of shared communication we had. All I had done was politely ask for a time-out, and instead I was treated to "WWIII: Hypocritical Drama Llamas Gone Wild".
To be honest with y'all, I don't know what else I could have done in this situation and remain honorable. While I concede that my timing may have been off, this entire family has been a wildly dysfunctional trainwreck for years, full of backbiting and quarreling amongst themselves. Perhaps it was just a matter of time before these people made me their personal pinata, which they have done to others that were close to the family. The paradoxical part of this is that while she has called me numerous times hysterical and crying when friends or family members allegedly insulted, screamed at, or stole from her, she was always supposedly at a loss as to how to handle those situations. Everytime I urged her to take the high road and detach with love and dignity if necessary. But as evidenced by her vile nasty-gram, those were apparently yet ANOTHER set of lessons she's failed to grasp. Presumably my remaining rational and exerting some self-control was a waste of time and effort. I guess being abusive and emotionally unattainable earns more respect and consideration from her.
All these years I had hoped that T would escape the cycle of toxic behavior, just as she claimed she wanted to desperately; but it seems that she just drawn to creating her own special brand of unhealthy dynamic. After this incident, considering the rude and ignorant remarks her father made to me in his letter, and even her husband's antipathy, I now have to wonder whether or not she has been manipulating everyone in this situation all along and for how long. Heck, I have to ponder how much she's being manipulated and used by others as well. I also have to consider in retrospect the possibility of how much of a deceptive instigator her father was with several different scenarios involving other long-time friends over the last decade. I guess I'll never know, and quite frankly, I no longer care. While I have no doubt that T loves her children and has her own odd set of good intentions, she is a troubled soul. I cannot enable and witness the damage any longer, including when it negatively impacts my personal life and wellbeing, which it has. Of course I am saddened about ending a relatioship that endured for over two decades, even one that may have been superficial and one-sided, but enough is enough.
However, it no longer matters; it's all over now, and I have to face the fact that I may have trusted and cared for a group of Jerry's (as in "Springer") Kids. I've definitely learned my own hard lesson about selecting, and dealing with, members of my "family of choice". And if T thinks for one second that she can try to weasel back into my existence after everything has blown over,forget it. I am done. D-O-N-E. I could have possibly forgiven her malicious email, but once she pulled in others, particularly her father, game over. T is on her own now, and I wish her the best of luck. With the folks she currently has "backing" her, she's going to need it.