You know how some things happen in your life things that are really big, bad big, the sorts of things that don’t go away that you have to simply learn how to live with?
I’ve been learning to deal with one of those situations for almost a year now. Since my hospitalized break down last March I have come further as a person and learned more about life and myself and human behavior than I ever could have in a class. But the truth remains in no particular order that 2008 was in the top three worst years of my thirty-one years to date. And the beginning of this year has shown that I’m not there yet, that things need to be said so I can for real move on, for real LET GO because it isn’t that I haven’t moved on, it is that every time something happens in relation to a decision that changed not just my whole life but my husband’s too, it is only ever talked about in bits and pieces or in gossip circles. There is so much misunderstanding and judgment already in regards to what I’m about to write about that this is by far the hardest post I have and probably ever will write on my website. I simply can not go on with this blog or as a writer if I don’t come out with my side of the story. I can handle people making the decision to not like me or judge me if you know the truth but I’ve realized I’m simply not strong enough to handle the fear, judgment and loss of so many things and people that are important to me without speaking my piece.
Back in 2003 I met a woman and it just so happened through university that Adam knew her too. We had a volatile friendship from the start, I found her to be sort of like The Weekly World News we drifted apart and back together when after years of trying, she got pregnant. Now my point is not to bash her but even she will admit she suffers from many mental illnesses and was not in a healthy relationship with the father, never has been. We spent almost every day together, Adam and I were the first people to meet the baby who were not family, and we spent a Christmas with her and her new family right after her father passed making it all about her because Christmas is not my thing but we cared deeply for her and still care for the baby. But there were issues right off the bat, issues with her and the baby. Adam and I grew concerned and so did my psychiatrist. I started to talk to my friend from high school another recently new mother who was floored by what I was relaying to her because I knew bad and wrong shit where going on with this baby but I was afraid to do something, she told me she’d have already called Child Protection Services. My shrink encouraged me weekly to call Emergency Medical Services. With what we knew, if the child was harmed, we could have been criminally charged and partially liable for not reporting to CS.
And with that after making the hardest decision I have ever made in my life, after all the unfair and unwarranted shit I have taken for doing the right thing I am going to tell you that based on all the information we had, all that I had witnessed, all that we had witnessed together and based on things she had stupidly written about on her own blog, all printed off and shown to my shrink, it had reached the point that I could not for my own humanity wait any longer. I called EMS, who advised me to immediately call the Ministry of Children, who were adamant that we had done the right thing by calling.
She can say that I deserved all the horrible things she did to me because in her eyes we attacked her child. She can’t understand that we did the opposite, that nobody would wish to bring this storm on themselves unless it was the only thing left to do to keep that child safe. We have a number of friends with children, all good parents; they stood by us when at first they didn’t understand and could really only think of how horrible that happening to them would have been but they’ve seen what we’ve gone through with this and support us in full.
I’m terrified of being judged even more by posting this, but it almost killed me last year and still via harassment in various forms causes a lot of grief when I find myself weak and let it in. I need to write and I won’t let this hold me back any more, I took the high road for a very, very long time, and I don’t see this as stepping back it is stepping forward, because through all the pain and insurmountable heartache and loss this one fateful call has caused us, I don’t regret making that call and there is nothing on earth that could make me.
* lyrics property of Natalie Merchant
