How Do Things Get So Messed Up?
How Do Things Get So Messed Up?
He’d been through a lot: defamation, death threats, harassment—civil and judicial. His children had been stolen from him, and he was an island. He’s gone without gas and electricity and food, and people constantly took, took, took. But through thick and thin, he could never forget his daughters, and he always had their picture—the two of them. They were his kids. He’d seen them born, changed their diapers, fed them in the middle of the night, and had taken them on countless bike rides . . . normal ‘dad’ stuff. Then after six years, they were gone. He wishes he could do more.
In Japan, in the 1990s, there were two types of divorce: kyougi and choutei. Kyougi divorce was uncontested divorce, the quickie divorce. The divorcing couple could fill out a one-page document, take it to the town hall, and be divorce on the spot. Choutei divorce was arbitrated divorce, when the divorcing couple does not agree on things, and mediation at the court house could last a few weeks or longer.
His wife placed the kyougi form in front of him and demanded he fill it out prior to court mediation while her mother explained to him—lied to him—that he had to fill it out in order to begin choutei. He could read much of the kanji (Chinese characters) where he filled in his name and address and signed it, but there was much more to the form. His wife took it to her mother’s house and filled her name in under the child custody portion, and then filed it at the town hall.
BAM! They were divorced, and his wife—ex-wife—had custody of their daughters, and he didn’t even know it. What a nice guy, huh?
BAM!
“Bad people get ahead; nice guys finish last.”
“Is that a proverb?”
“No, but it sure seems to be true.”
Sure he’s made plenty of stupid mistakes in life; he’s not perfect, not by a long shot, and he has a ton of regrets . . . but he’s a good guy, a nice guy, not conniving, not cunning. He did not deserve the defamation perpetrated against him. But hey, guess what . . . That’s life: bad people get ahead while nice guys are cut down, burned, beat up, lied to, conned, left out in the cold and generally just fucked with and shit on.
His children even hated him; he regretted leaving them with their mother and her family, but instead of allowing them witness to their parents’ hatred for each other, he did. Oh, she wanted the children directly back in the hateful situation; she had to demand that she be present 100% of the time if he wanted to see his children when he was trying to get visitation rights, because if she hadn’t, the court would have seen through all of her lies.
He remembers it all, everything. He was present at the births of his children, and he cut his eldest daughter’s umbilical cord. He remembers when her teeth started coming in, how he wanted to use a little rubber toothbrush to take care of them and help her teething, but his wife was against it. He remembers taking his daughter to preschools and watching her paint, taking her to aquariums where she picked up starfish, taking her to Disney on Ice, where she wanted to be in the front row, driving her to an Irish pub in Carmel for some of the best clam chowder money could buy, spending family time at the local mall shopping and eating cinnamon rolls, taking her to Disney Land, buying her toys, taking her to school, being kept completely out of the loop—of seeing photos of ski trips and visiting other places he was never told about, let alone invited to, singing to her, her first day of the first grade and how his wife was against him going. He remembers how his wife would purposely block his way in front of the children and then scream when he tried to get by, as if he were abusing her, which he never, ever did—oh, he gave the kids a spanking if they deserved it, but that’s all—and he remembers her slapping his daughter time and time again on her little two-year-old leg while yelling in her face because she wet her pants . . . and he remembers how his daughter came to mimic her mother’s insults toward him—oh, yeah, the parental alienation began from the get-go, it sure did. He remembers his wife coming home with a fat lip and half of her face swelled up and how she refused to tell him what happened. She probably had a tall tale for the kids, though. He remembers how his wife would spend all her time with the children at her mother’s house where she could be so entirely dependent on her brothers and sisters while she did whatever she wanted, i.e., work, play, lounge around—for the first six years of her life, his daughter called her grandmother ‘mom.’ He remembers slicing his wrists in his mother-in-law’s kitchen because of his wife’s non-stop verbal abuse and divorce threats—yeah, she played that card all the time. He remembers when he and his wife separated, and he remembers when his wife said she hated him, wished he’d go away, and didn’t care what he
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