The Good and the Bad...

In about 12 days it will be my six year anniversary in the blogging world. I started my original blog on 06/13/05. And since that very first post, I have used this space as a place to relate to people, to tell my story and to come to when I am at my very best and also at my very worst.

In two days and 18 hours I am getting married. One of the happiest days of my life.

Yet right now, I am here for one of the hardest. Good and bad all mixed together in a hodge podge of emotions and thoughts that I need to get out of my brain and on to paper so perhaps I can sleep. After all, I have 100 chairs to move tomorrow... I need my beauty rest.

So how do I say this to all of you? Bluntly seems to be the only way to start out the story....

Yesterday, at a counseling appointment, Zack told his counselor about the homemade "cigarettes" he watched his dad (FoTB) make. The counselor called me into the room and Zack retold the story about the paper that dad rips off and the stuff from the little bag that he puts on it and then he rolls it up and lights it on fire.

Today, FoTB tested dirty for marijuana.

I am sick to my stomach. I have been since yesterday. Several people in my life have said that this is a good thing, this means that we may finally get him out of Zack's life. Yet, I can't help but think, how in the world can the fact that my son watched his biological father roll and then smoke a joint EVER be a good thing.

My baby. My four year old son who has already in his lifetime been taken to a drug house at nine weeks, been away from his father for 7 months, been in the middle of a domestic altercation in which he watched his father verbally abuse and then throw things at his mother at 2 years old and now watched his father roll a joint at four years old. My son who is now on his second counselor in two years. An idea that to most people, including the insurance company lady I had to talk to to get pre-approval, seems so sad and so unheard of.

I am not mourning the loss of his biological father. When we told him he would not be able to see him or talk to him for awhile his reaction was to say yay, I don't want to go there anymore. I am instead mourning the loss of my child's innocence. Stolen way to soon by a man with no concept of what damage he has already done.

A man who still denies any wrong doing. (Apparently they are teaching joint rolling 101 on Sesame Street now...) A man who called me today to try to talk me out of turning him in. Who promised once again to get his life in order, that this was just a one time incident, that it was just a couple hits, that he had never bought anything, etc., etc., etc.

Even in the face of absolute truths, he can not admit to them....

Right now, I am sitting here, typing this with my angel in the next room and my heart hurts and soars for him all at once. He has lost his innocence. He has lost the ability to ever trust what that man has to bring to his life but in 2 days he will be gaining so much more. In two days we will all be a family and Jim will be the dad he needs. The man to teach him what trust and love and truth are. The man who will show him how a dad is supposed to treat his mom and him.

I know that this too shall pass. It always does. Every storm eventually ends and people begin to pick up the pieces. For right now, we have a minimum of one month to plan our clean up strategy. To get our heavy equipment into place and make sure that the next time we build a wall to keep the hurricane out, we build it even taller and stronger. For now that is all we can do. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other............