an unexpected phone call

I have been mulling over this for about 20 hours now and I am hoping that if I write it down it will get out of my head.

My ex-husband called last night.

That in itself is not such a big deal, I suppose. But, my ex-husband has not called in over 5 years. Not called me and not called his 2 boys…in over 5 years. Apparently yesterday was the day he finally felt the need to call.

He wanted to know about the boys – or so he said. But, before he bothered to ask anything about them, he chose to tell me that they now have a younger brother, err, half-brother.

“Nope” I told him, “they don’t”. Remember dude, your parental rights were terminated several years ago. Not only is your new baby not their brother or half-brother, you are not their father, or half-father, or every 5 years father. You are nothing to them but a name and distant memory and we are gonna keep it that way buddy!

Of course, talking to him again brought back lots of old feelings that were better off left in their little bitty distant memory box – anger, resentment, hurt are among the top. Hearing him tell me how I “pushed” him out of their lives makes me angry again, but it also brings up the little shards of guilt that I have always felt for initiating the termination. I have been telling myself that it was his choice to move back to California. It was his choice to not call or visit or support them. It was his choice to walk out of their lives.

That is what I keep telling myself, so why do I keep asking myself if I should have opened up to him about the boys? Why do I wonder if I have done the boys a disservice by not letting him back into their lives now? Why do let him have the power to make me doubt my decisions?

He had numerous opportunities to do right by the boys but it always encroached on “his” stuff. The courts gave him ample opportunities to make things right or even to enter a plea that he wanted to make things right, but he even chose to ignore that. He never showed up for a court case, never contacted my attorney or the guardian ad-litem or the court system. He just ignored it. He just ignored his children. And because of that, he lost the right to come back into their lives when it suits him.

When the boys are older, old enough to understand, they can contact him. I will help them find him if that is what they want. But, they have to be old enough to understand that people can be selfish, uncaring and mean and that some people are not meant to be parents. Until then, I won’t let them be hurt by him again. He has hurt them enough.