Anger Management

I woke up angry. I hate that feeling but I can't seem to control it. I woke up angry that my weekends, which used to be filled with family activities, have now been reduced to splitting our time with JT. It's not really splitting our time, of course. She gets a few hours on Saturday. I get the rest of the weekend; I get the rest of the week. I get the rest of his life. I am JT's Mama, the person who handles the daily business of living. She is Captain Fun, the person who chose to leave, and comes to visit for a few hours each weekend.

When she arrived, he was finishing his breakfast and watching some TV. He told her that he had borrowed a new Lilo & Stitch movie to watch. She said that she watched a Lilo & Stitch cartoon while she ate her breakfast this morning. He didn't seem impressed but I found that rich. How often did she sit down and watch a cartoon with JT when she was living here with us?

She tried to make idle chit-chat with me, like we were friends. She actually asked me how my week had been. I was speechless, which rarely happens to me. It was like she thought I could forgive her for what she's done. She's told people that we will be friends some day; she's told me that. Clearly she really believes it. All I can think is that she really doesn't know me at all.

He put on his shoes and they left. I'm still angry and I'm also sad. Who thinks that a child wants to live like this? Who thinks that a few hours of fun on Saturday makes a parent? Who thinks that their happiness must be bought at the cost of this pain, this hurt? Does she think he doesn't know what she's done?

I keep thinking that I don't know her anymore. And I realize that if we were strangers and we met and she told me that she had just moved out of her 6 year old son's home and left her partner of nine years, I wouldn't want to know her at all.