Highs and Lows

Seems to describe my life at the moment..but today was a good example.

The Highs:

• ticking off a lot of little items off my “To Do List” – getting lots of stuff done before we head off down south for a week of the school holidays
• enjoying a yummy lunch with my younger brother at my older brother’s new cafe (opened this week)
• the feeling of satisfaction of seeing my photography and design work in use, promoting the cafe (and me)

• the elation of getting booked for 2 portrait sessions in one day!!!!! One – an extended family portrait (Grandparents, Kids and grandkids) and the other – corporate headshots (This is a major HIGH, but I’m also petrified about it!)

The lows

• spending the afternoon in a meeting with my solicitor trying to find a way to resolve the ongoing financial issues with Rocky…

I haven’t blogged about it much because, frankly, I haven’t really wanted to talk about it. I’m sick of it to be honest. Sick of having to constantly be confronted with the disappointment and anger and frustration. As far as we have come in the last year, and as much as he has let us down, part of me still wants to expect the best from him, which means he is still capable of throwing a curve ball when he lets us down yet again.

That’s all a bit cryptic isn’t it, so to explain:

Within a few months of getting back home we came to an agreement on distribution of assets, child support and spousal maintenance. I saw a lawyer, got some advice, talked to Rocky, made a number of concessions on what he had originally promised before we left Mexico and we settled on a monthly amount that he would pay us. It is fair and reasonable and was based on calculations Rocky had done to estimate our monthly needs (I did my own calculations and came up with the same amount). We have always kept detailed budgets so it wasn’t hard to know exactly what the bills and expenses would be. We also agreed (among other things) that Rocky would start putting money away to pay for the school fees, something we had started saving for as a couple from the moment Guerita was born. We discussed that the spousal payments would stop if I remarried, but not if I went back to work since (in his words) “any extra income I earned would allow me to save for the kids”. Just to be clear, that monthly amount allows us to live with the bills we have. It doesn’t give me any prospects of paying off the mortgage before I die, or having a holiday (other than the frequent flyer points/stay with family variety) or buying a new car or renovating my house. It just allows us to tread water.

Since August he has been paying that amount every month on time. I continued to talk to my lawyer about the finer legal points (not changing anything, just getting wording right etc). It took time to get the agreements ready, because…well these things often do take time. I probably didn’t push for it to be done as quickly as I could, there were some minor delays with the lawyer but we got there in the end. I gave the agreement to Rocky so he could seek his own legal advice and we could sign it and get it over with. He delayed because he had to go away for work, and then he wanted to buy a house and thought it best not to have that binding contract when applying for a mortgage. I was reasonable and didn’t object to his delays.

Finally about a month ago he went to see his lawyer and lo and behold she recommends some changes. She thinks its too generous and her proposal:

• reduce the monthly payment and have it fluctuate to reflect his changing income (how convenient that he’s now self-employed)
• stop the spousal payments (which are 65% of the total) after 4 years – yep, that’s right – he’s effectively saying that in 4 years (when Chiq will have been in full time school for all of a minute) I should be able to support myself and the kids on the child support amount alone – which covers the mortgage and not much else.
• not pay for the kids school fees. His reason “I can’t afford it”

If that were to be accepted it would mean I would have to work my arse off in the next 4 years just to stay in the same position I’m in now – so if I was able to support myself and the kids by then, he would get the benefit of reduced payments. On top of that I would have to save the kids school fees myself (because unlike him I don’t think they should suffer, and receive less opportunities because of the decisions he made in life).

Sometimes I lie awake at night trying to work out how I could have married someone so incredibly selfish. Someone who time and time again puts himself first, puts his own needs above his children. I think in his own deluded version of reality he thinks he is a good father. He sees them and talks to them often, they love spending time with him and they do fun things together, like go to the park. Of course, he never has to do housework or laundry or get them ready for school when he’s with them – it’s all play time. When he pulls this sort of stunt, it makes me realise….

He’s really only a father to them when it’s convenient to him.

Well, that’s not good enough as far as I’m concerned. You don’t get to choose when it’s convenient to be a parent and when it’s not; when it would suit you if you didn’t have to pay as much for them. On a few occasions he has cancelled a weekend or visit with them because he’s sick, and while I agree with him that I don’t want him to infect the kids, I also think “hmmm, it’s so easy when you can “call in sick” on your kids”. Most real parents know you can’t do that. Parenting is not a job with sick days or paid holidays. Don’t get me wrong, it is by far and away the best job in the world, and I don’t want to have holidays or sick days from it. I love it when I get an extra weekend with the girls because he’s cancelled, but this tells me a lot about his attitude and sense of responsibility towards the kids.

It’s pretty clear that the more removed he is from our marriage, the less responsible he feels for us. I imagine he assuages whatever guilt he might still feel by telling himself he is only trying to reduce payments to me, not the girls, but I know he knows full well that there’s no real distinction. With kids this young the line between what supports me and supports them is completely blurred.

But while dealing with this, and all the emotions and disappointment it stirs up, is a low, and something I would of course rather not be going through, I left my lawyer’s office today feeling positive and hopeful that we can resolve it without it getting nasty and with the kids properly provided for.

Maybe I’m just a hopeless optimist, but I can’t give up on the idea that my kids can still be happy and well-adjusted, have a good relationship with their father and enjoy all the opportunities they would have had if we’d stayed together. I refuse to accept that they should be the victims of this mess. So I continue to bight my tongue around them, I continue to hand them over to him with a smile and never utter a disparaging word about him to them.

But its hard.