It’s been 2 years. 2 years since I told myself that I would never again allow someone to treat me that way. 2 years since I asked to be left alone. 2 years since the decision I made to keep myself safe and healthy caused the past 2 years from hell. Everything that has transpired since that day doesn’t even seem possible or remotely believable and in the less dark moments some of it becomes even laughable. Never would I have imagined the lengths someone would go to try to appear to be the victim in a circumstance entirely created by their own actions and words.

I spent most of the first year in a dark, dark place. Those around me who knew what was happening told me to ignore the noise, ignore the lies, ignore the hate – to hold my head high that even in the end I was the bigger person. After the fact, when I was hearing lies about myself anyway – that I was dangerous, that I was aggressive, that my children weren’t safe with me, that I was scary – I felt a burning rage of something like regret that if they were going to spread those rumors regardless maybe I should have reacted to them with anger and screamed at them. They certainly deserved it. Manipulating, conditioning and lying to children like they had been is a form of child abuse and there is a special place in hell for those people. But even though I felt and still feel how unjust it is that I gave no reaction when a fury of rage would have certainly been understood in the name of protecting my children, I know one thing for certain: I would never have been capable of doing that in front of our kids. To this day – that final incident at their house was one of only two times that they have witnessed an adult verbally assaulting and screaming at someone in aggression. Unfortunately, the second time the kids have witnessed this was 6 months later, also from the same people, this time directed at their dad, this time at their house, and this time it involved attempted physical assault and eventually law enforcement. All right in front of them. I will not lie, after this incident occurred I felt the first little glimmer of hope that maybe now everything would be quiet. No more lies about my character, no more trespassing on our property, no more hiding down the block and watching us from their car, no more going through our phone records, no more enlisting others to contact me and attempting to shame me into reestablishing contact… maybe now we would finally be able to have the peace in our lives we were so desperate for…

HA! I am still such a naïve asshole. Of course they didn’t feel any shame or regret and slink into the shadows. In fact, on their WAY HOME from being escorted off our property by the police they started calling family members and immediately flipping the story around to anyone who would listen. Of course they didn’t attack my husband – HE attacked THEM. He is dangerous, don’t talk to him anymore, he is crazy. It’s exactly what they did to me, now just chapter two. I admit, part of me felt some relief. It wasn’t just me they were willing to permanently lose, it was my husband too. Their egos are so fragile that they would rather lose their own family member than apologize for some truly insane things that they’ve done. I remember lying awake that night thinking to myself… there can’t be many people who would actually believe them. That it’s not just me that’s crazy that it’s also my husband too? I was just a lib-tard, white trash, bad, tattooed, ugly, atheist, outsider that their friends and family only got to casually know over the course of a decade or so but they’ve all known my husband his entire life and had to have known that the lies they were spreading were absolutely not his character. But the thing about my husband is – he knows his worth far more than I do and is more secure in himself than I will ever be. He has let people just believe lies about him and for the most part seems hardly bothered by it. I strive to be like that. The most important part- and I have to remind myself this frequently as insanely ridiculous things continue to occur- our kids got to see it all. Our kids witnessed 2 very, very scary and intense incidents and they came to their own conclusions very quickly. Those people are bullies. And in little kid world, it’s all black and white. If you are a bully, we don’t want to play with you. I remember a text after the incident: “What do you tell the kids why they don’t see us anymore, do they think we are dead?!”… um no. They think you are scary and you attacked both their mommy and their daddy. They don’t ask about you. Black and white.

In therapy I am working through the anger I have. The past 2 years aside, I have allowed the anger and unfairness of the entirety of my experience with these people bubble out of me and into a space where it is safe to discuss how much they have taken from me and from our life both as a couple and as parents. It’s hard for me to talk through the memories because I look back at myself and how I was in the beginning and I just want to shake her. I hate myself for thinking “being the bigger person” indefinitely was an acceptable way to live. There are some such acutely painful memories where I know a decision to cut contact at that point was absolutely warranted and yet… we let it go on for far too long. It was almost inevitable that it escalated to the point it did because of how apparent it was from how even the tiniest attempt to set a small boundary would cause an unbelievably inappropriate reaction of anger and blatant refusal to comply. Before kids it didn’t seem worth these reactions… but after kids, especially as it came to being a matter of our kids safety… well there’s no negotiating on that for us. It is still shocking (and a little sickening) to me that they are so mentally incapable of adhering to a boundary (“DON’T YOU THINK WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING?!”) that they would rather risk the safety of our kids to prove a point than protect them at all costs. I cannot comprehend.

To this day I don’t know what exactly I am supposed to have done that is so awful. I know I “ruined the family”. I am sure not being allowed to see our children because we want to protect their safety doesn’t fit with the public image they like to present but is there ever any personal reflection about how we came to be at this place? I know they are big feelings mad that I post things on my social media (that they are all blocked from but enlist people to spy and report back on what I’m posting… which is… I’m sorry so middle school I can’t not laugh). I don’t say who I post about so it boggles my mind that they insist to others that my posts are about them. If you are adamantly denying that you’ve done anything wrong and I’m the crazy one – why for one second would you relate to what I’m posting or be paranoid it is referencing you? Does the shoe maybe fit a little bit? But again, I don’t say who my posts are about. I know we reported the 5 fraudulent life insurance policies they took out on our kids. Because… of course we did. We don’t allow people to forge our signatures. We also don’t lie to federal investigators when interviewed about the fraud. We also would never want people we don’t speak to be beneficiary on life insurance policies for our children? What am I missing about this? The lawyer we spoke to urged us to press charges against them for what they did – because it is FELONY FRAUD. The fact that we and our children are owed the BIGGEST apology for someone exploiting them to earn commission and a sales quota trip, not to mention for forging our signatures dozens of times but instead I’m getting called the B word and the C word and evil and a horrible person…. it’s… literally cuckoo town. I feel like I get dumber every time I tell this story to someone because of how beyond ridiculous I sound even just trying to explain what they all did. Cuckoo.

2 years. It’s been 2 years of hell. But here’s the thing. It’s a happy anniversary. Despite the noise, despite the despicable actions others continue to take, despite the slander and the lies and the sadness and the depression and the regret and the anxiety and the anger and the frustration and the endless, endless cycle that people who refuse to grow continue to somehow affect us with – we are free. That’s what I need to focus on and that’s what we celebrate today. We are free, we are safe, and our children are thriving – and a large part of this all is due to the fact that we removed ourselves from their perpetual toxicity. And that makes this a happy anniversary, despite the rest.

And just a reminder. I didn’t specify who I’m referring to in this post. If you are reading this getting angry that I’m talking about the things you did – I’m allowed to talk about what we’ve been through. And if you’re reading this getting angry immediately ready to start yelling to people “that’s not what happened she’s a liar she’s crazy don’t listen to her” – if what I wrote in this post isn’t describing events we’ve been through with you than it’s not about you. If you stop claiming to be the people my posts are about I bet people wouldn’t assume they were also about you. After all, you’ve done nothing wrong.