Dream 12/29/2012.

I had a very long-winded dream last night. At one point, I woke up in the middle of the dream to go to the bathroom and after falling back to sleep, I went right back into the dream. It was obviously an important dream. I rarely have moments like that unless I’m having nightmares. Now, it’s possible I can say that this dream was a nightmare because it ended rather suddenly and because my mind said, NOPE MOTHERFUCKER; GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE. But, over all, it really wasn’t much of a nightmare. It just was what it was.

I was driving down to visit my mother in Texas. I was alone in the dream, and yet I wasn’t. I took both of my dogs with me to visit my mom as well as my son. We were going to visit. I had a vague feeling that something was wrong with my mother and she needed me. I found her in a park that doesn’t exist where she lives. We started walking around. At some points, my dogs were there and at other points, they weren’t. My son was nowhere to be found while I talked with my mom about things. She was being evasive, which isn’t my mom at all. There was obviously something she didn’t want to tell me. She was nervous. We walked into the paramedic station attached to the police department down there and there was my ex-husband sitting in the middle of a desk, looking a little too comfortable.

My mom had been trying to keep me away from my ex-husband.

I went insane. My mom disappeared from the dream at this point. She was only a vague background note. I went insane at my ex-husband, demanding to know what the hell he was doing there. He was sullying and destroying everything by being back down there. I kept rounding on him, reminding him how much he hated Texas and how the entire time we were down there, he would go on about wanting to move back up north. He just kept laughing me off, like what I was saying wasn’t valid at all. I was getting so angry with him and it really got the better of me when, walking somewhere random, he told me he was actually living with my mother. He had conned her into it somehow and he was living in her house.

I flipped the mother fuck out and started attacking him. I started beating at him with closed fits, which was completely ineffectual. This was borne out in the fact that he just kept laughing at me with each ineffectual hit in his direction. He wasn’t even trying to block the hits, either. They would make contact and my fists would bounce off of him, like he was wearing a protective carapace or something. I finally got so tired and winded that I had to stop attacking him. It wasn’t like it was doing anything. It wasn’t like I was proving a point except that everyone would think I was the crazy one, attacking a pillar of the community* and just generally acting like an escapee from an insane asylum. We started walking and he began telling me about his life in Texas.

* This is actually a very real fear of mine, both current and past. There’s something inhuman and disturbing about how easily he has had things. I mean, I know his life hasn’t been all sunshine and roses; I know. But he always comes off as the wounded soldier, the one who was wronged even if he was the one doing the wrongs. When he would tell stories about the fucked up shit he used to do to Demon Boy as a child, we would all end up laughing about how Demon Boy was in the wrong when really, it was my ex-husband. This is part of the reason I never, ever considered telling anyone what an emotionally and mentally abusive asshole he had become in the final few months we were together. I had proof in the Sister, but she was “crazy” and he could spin whatever yarns he wanted… people would believe him over us any day.

We walked back to my mother’s house, which isn’t the house she actually lives in. It was a bigger, white edifice. There were stories, which is ridiculous. If you live on an island in Texas, you really shouldn’t have a home larger than two stories. In reality, there are plenty of storied homes on the island where my mother lives. But, I’ve always thought the salt box, single floor homes were made to survive any hurricane the Gulf can throw at them and the storied edifices of the rich assholes from Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin would fall apart at the first sign of a good storm.

We walked into his home – it had become as though my mother was living off of his largesse – and he warned me that his family was home. I had to be a good girl. I had to behave myself. The house had become my childhood home. I went upstairs and I met his blonde-haired wife. (I don’t actually know what she looks like but I’ve always assumed she’s the Nordic perfect beauty that men drool over.) She was sitting in the room, on the bed, owning everything. She was condescending and bitchy. I flew at her in a rage and I began slapping her. I began to beat the shit out of her and the ex-husband was nowhere. She kept screaming at me that she was a lady and she would beat me if she wasn’t so much of a lady. I laughed at her. I made sure to slap her open handed, like the ex-husband would have done to me if I had stayed, because we don’t want to leave marks.

I ruined her pretty hair. I ruined her perfect make up. I destroyed her bedroom. I made it a mess.

I walked away, breathing heavily. I wanted to take a few minutes to gather myself because I was behaving childishly. I turned to the ex-husband, who was down in my childhood kitchen. He was looking amused. “Were you fucking her when we were together?” I asked him coolly. He smirked at me and replied, “Of course, I was. You already knew that.” I went into another white hot rage and ran at after her. I started hitting her until the ex-husband interrupted our girl fight. He said, “I want to introduce you to my son.” And there was MY SON, in his arms.

My beautiful baby boy was staring at me as though he didn’t know me. There was no outstretched arms for hugs. There was no snuggling under the blankets and watching TV together. This child was my son; it was his face, his body, his clothes, his demeanor, his personality. But he didn’t know who I was. And I began to cry. I moved away from the ex-husband’s wife. They had stolen my son and I told them that they had done this to me. I would make them pay. And the ex-husband just smiled at me as though I were insane. And his wife said, “That’s my son.”

I took my/our/their son downstairs to show him something. And the wife started hurling threats about what they would do to me if I tried to steal “their” child from them. And I was crying. And I took this child who didn’t know me down into the kitchen and pulled out a piece of meat. And I said, “Look, it’s an angel. It’s really an angel in there.” And he said that was very cool. And the cold, dead meat really did look like an angel. And I was so angry because my mom knew this had happened and hadn’t told me. And I was so angry at the ex and his wife, knowing no one would believe me about this being my child and their stealing him from me.

And then I forced myself awake because that’s some fucked up shit for a mother to go through.

Now, upon waking, I thought that the stealing of my son had to do with some bullshit regarding my son’s birth certificate. You see, his father isn’t on it. In Texas, where my son was born, there’s this silly, backwards law that states that if you’ve been married within the last 300 days of having a child, the man you were married to would be placed on the birth certificate. I refused to have my ex-husband’s name near it because the child was not his; R is TH’s child. I had stopped having relations with my ex-husband after February 1st** and my son was conceived in either March or April. (April, I think.) But, Texas people wouldn’t listen to me about this. The ex-husband either had to go on the birth certificate, the ‘father’ portion was left blank, or the ex-husband showed up to deny paternity but he had to be at the hospital even though he was living in Massachusetts. They refused to fax the paperwork or anything, not that I wanted anything to do with that asshole during the days following the birth of my son.

After moving back up to MA, I started the proceedings to get TH put on our child’s birth certificate, but never went anywhere with it. We didn’t have the money to file everything with the Attorney General’s office. I decided it would be easier to do a blood test, but it stopped being so important. The ex-husband had signed all the paper work denying custody, so it didn’t matter anymore if the father portion was blank on the certificate. I didn’t have to push the matter and I was grateful for that.

I woke up thinking we should have a blood test done, but we don’t have insurance, so how do I go about doing that?

But, I don’t think my fears that my ex-husband would steal my child are valid. In reality, he would not do that. Besides, he has a child of his own now if I hear the reports correctly. So, what the hell?

As of right now, this is the going theory, supplied by L. Your son is the only person you really actually care about at this point. he is your life. your ex still has control over many aspects of yourself and your life. you’re not totally resolved with that issue yet. he drains you in many ways, and takes from you what is rightfully yours. you also mentioned before he always wanted a kid and that was part of your core issues with him back int he day. its showing you these things are still issues within you…that you are not free from him within yourself–he still influences you and steals your happiness Yeah. That sounds about right.