More nonsense from XAH today. I woke up to messages telling me he expects daughter there for the next 2 weekends as he has "missed out on 3". I don't know what that means as she's been visiting every 2 weeks lately and I also don't think it's right to wake me with messages circa 5am. However I know he's trying to rattle me so I don't reply. I close my eyes and talk to my HP. "HP, grant me the good sense to turn my phone off before I go to bed in future and the serenity to go back to sleep right now and not worry about this crap until a more civilised hour".

He will tire of these games eventually. Surely. As long as I don't give in and start engaging. Things were so peaceful with him for such a long time. It seemed we had finally arrived at a place of mutual respect and detached co-parenting. I had forgotten how belligerant and absurd he can be. My grandmother says she thinks they are having big problems in their marriage and that is why he is fixating on making my life difficult again. Perhaps she is right. Who knows. I think he really needs to get over it, whatever "it" is. Because I am getting really P'd off.

Anyway later, when I wake up of my own volition I reply no, it's not possible to bring daughter for any extra visits. I don't respond to any further texts about it; I have answered him already. I look back through my phone. As a general rule I respond roughly once for every 5 or 6 of his texts, in a few words to his angry essays. In many instances I have used yes or no as complete sentences. He gets very upset when I do this; why won't I TALK to him? But there is no talking really; he doesn't listen or believe anything I say anyway. He just rants and then dismisses everything I say when I try to respond. I don't even know what he wants anymore; I don't know what the point of all of this textual harrasment is, I just know I don't want to join in. It used to be the other way around, years ago. It's a weird tangible sign of my progress. Divorce with children can be such a horrible, unhealthy never ending nightmare. I can't believe 12 years later he is still infecting my life like this and I can't just create no contact with him. But as Debb pointed out here yesterday when I was complaining about the very same thing, it will pass. That cheered me considerably. In fact we really only have 5 or 6 more years of him having increasingly diminished reasons to bother me at all. And then I truly can say no contact and be done with him forever. I think I will celebrate when we arrive at that time. Maybe with that trip to the Greek Isles I have always wanted to take. That's a nice thought.

So moments later he tried to instigate the next text based drama....he is expecting me to get daughter a passport immediately. Huh? I say if he wants her to have a passport he can arrange it and I will sign the papers...no he says, "We were good enough to get the last one, it's your turn this time, it's the least you can do". Um, I've never taken our daughter out of the country. In fact I haven't had a holiday of any kind since our awful cheap depressing honeymoon 13 years ago. Which I paid for alone. Precious memories.... I didn't tell him any of this of course,  it's just the irrelevant resentments that went through my head. And why does he always refer to himself as "we" instead of "I"? Does he think he is the Pope of Rome?  I really find the idea that he expects me to organise her a passport so he can take her on another overseas trip freaking absurd. My turn? When is it his turn to pay for school books? Fees? Uniform? Medical expenses? Dental bills? What is the least HE can do? His wife keeps sending me emails to say daughter needs braces, he says I am to pay for them "out of his child support". What he pays is a pittance, it maybe covers about half of what she eats each week. On a lean week. Maybe. When he pays. Then he fudges his taxes and underpays me and I end up with a debt to the student allowance people who assume I collect the correct amount from him (they reduce my allowance by 50% of what he pays). So I not only receive much less from him that I am meant to, I also get slugged with a debt every year because of his illegal book-cookery. GRRRRRR. At least he can't do THAT any more, as I now have the child support people collecting for me. If he fudges his income they will force him to back pay me any balance which will cover any debt caused by his amended tax returns. He can't pull a fast one on me this year or ever again and I know he is seething over it. Ha. But its hurtful for daughter that they tell her every time she visits that her teeth look bad and she needs braces, yet they refuse to contribute to the cost. I don't have $6000, sigh. It's just more stupid cruel nonsense. Anyway I like her teeth. They aren't terrible, they are very slightly bucked at the front but not in a bad way and she has very elongated and pointy canines which I know she enjoys. She calls them her "vampire teeth".  Not everyone's teeth need to be manicured and identical, hers are symmetrical, they have character, they suit her. Think Kiera Knightley. Does she need braces? No, her teeth are awesome. So are daughters. Sigh. If stepmother didn't keep telling her she needed braces I don't think she'd even worry about it. 

Anyway the passport thing throws me for a loop because when I meet daughter after school today, she is very upset and unfriendly. I feel sad because I have come to surprise her after school so we can go shopping, splurge a tiny bit with the child support arrears, have a fun afternoon together. I thought she would be really happy. It turns out her father has been messaging her at school. he and his wife and kids are going on a cruise apparently and he tells her "your mother has to get you a passport or you won't be able to come". She's almost in tears. I can see she is fed up, worried she will miss out again (he went to New Zealand a year ago and told daughter it would be just he and her going. She was so excited. I said she could go, I was happy for her. Then inexplicably he took his wife and other children and not our daughter and told her SHE COULDN'T GO BECAUSE HER MOTHER SAID SHE COULDN'T. She was so hurt and she knew it was just lies and games. They went when it was her birthday and she bitterly told me "So what will they give me for my birthday? A framed picture of them all on holiday without me?" Then he did it again a few months ago, called me late on a Friday to say he was going overseas and he would take daughter "if I could have a passport organised by Monday morning". Nothing is open on the weekend; it's not even possible to get a passport when the passport office is shut.... it was just a stupid set up and again, devistated daughter and nothing I could do to make it better for her. She was so angry and let down and suddenly now he has become her hero again until the next disappointment. I feel like no matter what I do, he is making sure she becomes a card carrying member of that merry go round called denial.

OK here's an even stupider example. Daughter was saving for a go-pro camera last year. She was asking anyone and everyone if they had work she could do to help her earn money for her camera. When he asked me "what does she need" (he often asks this and then refuses to actually help, it's another game) I told him she was trying to earn money to buy a go-pro and maybe he could find some jobs she could do that he could pay her for when she visits him to help her save. So the next time she went she came home and told me "he said he pays you child support and if I want to be paid for jobs you have to pay me". Way to go, dude. So, I paid her for jobs, my mother paid her for jobs and so did one of my friends and she saved up and eventually bought her camera. A few weeks ago she came home and informed me that her father had bought a go-pro camera for his 4 year old son. A $600 camera for a 4 year old to strap to his BMX bike. I see. This is the sort of inequity she is facing and there is not a thing I can do about it. It's so frustrating.

So anyway, this afternoon I could see she was defeated and miserable, Sick of being caught in the middle of these stupid games and sad thinking she will miss out again.  Is it yet another set up? Who knows. It's just very tiring and depressing. He can't get a rise out of me so the next tactic is to say "do what I say or I will deny our daughter and make her sad". What can I do with that really. It's impossible. Well, it's impossible for me to think my way out of. It's not impossible for my HP. The next right thing for me is to keep responding minimally and civilly. The next wrong action would be to engage and show my anger and frustration. It has never helped and will only keep the whole game in play for longer. So I'm sitting in her favorite cafe drinking a bloody expensive iced coffee with daughter which she usually loves but instead she is on the verge of tears. I have to really pull myself together and not add to her burden with my own outrage at her father. She doesn't need to hear me angrily stating my side of the story. What possible control does she have over it? How will it help for me to tell her that her father is an AH (and I don't mean alcoholic husband). It won't help anyone.  

I have a friend that does divorce counselling, she says its very common that when a couple have bad problems often the step parent will fixate on the ex and try to demonise them to take the focus off themselves and paint themselves out to be a perfect martyr. The the two of them can unite against a common enemy and avoid their own marriage issues. Everything is wrong because of his horrible ex wife. Maybe that's it, who knows. It makes sense. I  just know that It's so hard to detach when they work so hard at creating drama and sadness and it all seems to be directed at me.. I fantasise that he will be offered a job back in New Zealand and move his whole family back there. My mother says he would probably try to force me to fly there and back every second weekend so he could have his visitations, lol. He probably would, too.

I have to pause while daughter fights back angry tears because I am angry too and I really, really don't want it to soil our afternoon. I breath slowly and ask my HP to help me let it go and find a way to have a nice afternoon together. Then I tell her I will do what I can to make sure she is included and not to worry about it. It's difficult because I don't want her to be hurt but I also don't want to give in to his bullying. There's no sensible middle ground. Gaaah! How do I navigate my way through this? If I give in to his demands I create a precedent for him to capitalise on. If I say no he goes on yet another holiday and tells daughter she can't come because "her mother wouldn't let her". 

I remind her that I am going to take her to Sydney next year for the computer game convention she is itching to go to. This cheers her up. It will be our first holiday together. I'll drive, my first road trip. It's affordable, something to look forward to. I tell her we need to start planning where we will stay and what we will do. This is a much nicer conversation to have. We finish our drinks and go shopping; our favorite shop is having a sale and I buy us each a couple of winter tops. She seems happier. Am I turning into my mother, salving everything with gifts? Maybe but it's fun; we don't have a lot of luxuries and there is a perverse pleasure in spending some of that back paid child support money on some niceties for us both.

Then we go to the nail salon. Daughter knows I am planning to get my own nails done.  I tell the lady we would each like a set of acrylic nails please, with French tips. Daughter grins so hard I worry that the top of her head will fall off. We spend a lovely hour having our nails done and talking to the couple who run the salon, who have children at daughter's high school. Daughter is now chatting away happily. It's nice. We spend the rest of the trip home and evening discovering how very difficult it is to do things with acrylic nails and laughing. Yay.

It will be OK. Everything is always OK when I remember I am powerless and can only do the next right thing and ask my HP to take care of the rest.

I just want to have this child of mine be happy. I want me to be happy. I am aware that I seem to keep moving from one adversary to another; ABF was making me miserable, then my mother, now daughter's father. It isn't lost on me that I always seem to have a 3rd party that is making life difficult; somehow I am still stuck in a victim mentality. But I want to move past that and one right action after another is the only path I know that can possibly lead me there.

Anyway here are the fruits of our afternoon. They feel so weird!!!