We'll never know everything

[PinkieV]

Hi everyone, I haven't been around too much, uBPDm has been happy and quiet, and SS16 flourishing and happy. He just finished his sophomore year with a 4.0+ GPA and friends - he finally found his tribe!  He'll be getting his license soon, as has scaled back counseling to once a month.  Successes all around.

SS16's maternal aunt visited for two days and he was thrilled to have her all to himself, as his older brother, SS20, is on a roadtrip.  She is absolutely awesome, and he had a great time (we are friends with the whole family).

SS16 opened up to her quite a bit, and she shared some with us.  The thing that stuck with me most is that he said "my mom stole my childhood". He also told us about the last birthday he spent with her - the birthday he checked the mail and got my DH's gift by accident.  uBPDm usually threw them away or returned them. That was the start of my DH making contact with the boys after 10+ years of extreme alienation.  He won emergency custody of them a few months later when she was sentenced to a year in jail for embezzlement.

SS16 also told us she took his younger sister on a camp out over his birthday weekend and he was left at a friend's.  We've never heard this, and I realized, as much as we know, there's so much more that we will never know.  We didn't know about the times her parents and sisters would go pick up the kids and there was glass shattered all over the floor and she was threatening to kill herself.  I'm just so sad, and so damn angry at her.

I know we've had the best possible outcome so far, and I'm thankful she lives two states away and we have very limited contact.  I'm glad I don't have to play nice with her and have time to let this information digest and get filed away into the cabinet in my mind with all the other wretched things we've found out. I hope she doesn't make a plan for summer visitation, and he gets to stay home, right where he wants to be.  I hope.

[Thunderstruck]

I feel like that too sometimes. uBPDbm has another "baby daddy" (I hate that phrase, but that's pretty much what him and my DH are) whose wife reached out to me a few months ago. She told me a bunch of information that just made me sick to my stomach. There is so much we didn't know, and so much we still don't know (not even sure we want to!).

That bad thing is, we're still stuck in 50/50. 

I am so glad to hear your SS is doing so well!