Photo by James Forbes on Unsplash

I don’t want to remain strong. I want to lay down in defeat. But that is not how I become powerful.

I didn’t believe he could actually charm all of them to blindness. How do they not see what he’s doing? The counselor- the one he chose- she sees signs of PTSD… if I were her client, she said, we’d be working on treatment for PTSD. The kids? Oh, they’d be fine if it weren’t for me. So says the nice counselor-lady. They have to remain open, they have to want this. They don’t have any other choice.

No, there’s no agenda, she assured me. Although, her very next words kind of directly pointed right at an agenda…it’s the GAL (Guardian Ad Litem), he’s the one with the agenda, not her, the neutral counselor. He wants to get the kids to go to their dad’s for placement. Apparently, the nice counselor-lady will use any means necessary.

But that was enough to stick a thorn of doubt in me.

Is the assessment from the GAL and the counselor accurate? Have I so colored and altered my children’s view of their father?

Fine. I will entertain the notion, but it is a position of vulnerability. I lose my power in this place. That’s when the dissonance starts. It’s not just unsettling, it’s jarring, and shifts me into a world that doesn’t make sense. I can see normalcy happening all around me, but cannot expect it in my own life.

I thought I was free of this, I thought I got out. Maybe I was wrong, maybe what I know and see and hear about how life can be is a lie. Maybe I really am the one who talks in circles and circles.