Seeing the Forest In Spite of The Trees......Chapter 8

In that moment life sucked. But I knew the pity party had went on long enough. I contacted a friend of mine whom I had hired when I was a big time supervisor. Since the company had split she was a hiring manager at one of the locations. She brought me back in to work. Of course now I was not a supervisor making the big bucks. I would have to start and probably remain in the entry level position that I had held 7 years prior. It was degrading but a job nonetheless. So we just kinda muddled through that  time frame. It was a period of rebuilding.
Things had been quiet with Suzy for a while. Suzy remained with Fabio for more than a couple months and she seemed content. While David had issues with him because he did not speak English, I thought he was grand. He seemed good for the kids. He was involved in their lives and took on a parental role. This was the first guy I had seen her with that seemed interested in the kids rather than just her. So I was happy, for her and the kids. I couldn't help but feel like David's issues with Fabio were more out of jealousy than genuine concern for his kids. The kids quality of life was better than it had been for a while but yet David still had issues with it. Then Suzy had some medical issue that required surgery. It did not sound serious to me it was an outpatient procedure. But David made a big deal of it and said he would have to go stay there for two days to take care of his kids, which were teens by the way. Not to mention that Suzy's mom, dad, sisters, and fiance were all gonna be there. It definitely was not necessary for David to go but the fact that he wanted to made me feel like he cared way too much for Suzy. When I talked to him about this he said that he was going to support his kids because they would be having a hard time with mom having surgery and he would do the same for me even if we were separated. 
Ironic that I was able to test that theory a couple months later when I was driving with my kids on the way home from work one evening and we were in a car accident. It was a huge wreck and two of my three kids that were with me at that time got hurt as did I. I had never had a wreck and was traumatized as were my children. We were all taken to the hospital and I was put on heavy meds. I needed David to stay home with me for a couple days to help with the kids and for comfort. But sadly, he went to work the very next day. He had his sister come in from out of town to sit with me. That hurt like hell. I could not help but wonder why he didn't have his sister sit with Suzy, yet he felt he needed to be there for her but for me, his sister would do. This burned a hole of resentment in me that is still there to this day.
Time went on. A year or so passed when David informed me that he did not feel that driving into town and spending a day and having to leave by nightfall was an appropriate amount of time to spend with his kids. He did not like the fact that he had to "rush home". So he began a pattern that would seal his fate later on. He decided that when he went to visit his kids he would just stay all night or all weekend so he could "wake up to them or not have restricted time with them". He claimed that he would take the kids to stay at his brothers who lived 2 minutes from Suzy. Apparently the kids no longer wanted to spend weekends at my home.  
I call Bullshit! I felt as if there was more than I knew going on. When I would confront David about it he would say "well you are always welcome to come with me". Yeah right like I can just blow off my weekends not to mention my kids. He knew that would never work so that is why he invited me along in the first place. It was so he could say "I said you can go too" when we argued about it. The overnight/all weekend visits gradually became more and more frequent. Until they reached the point that it was 4 weekends there, 1 weekend home. His reasoning about being with his kids meant jack to me because remember he had kids here with me too. His feeling on that was that  the kids here see me everyday. Big whoop when he gets in from work around 8pm and that's when they go to bed. I became more and more frustrated but felt stuck. I was working but at a decreased rate of pay and with the bills still so far behind I needed every penny David would provide. So I just dealt with it. Dealt with it loudly at first then just decided to quietly stew about it for almost an entire year.


If you want the story that led to here you can click here for Chapter 7
And here for Chapter 6, where you will also find links to all remaining chapters.