Thirteen years have been put into our relationship. The years have been filled with happiness and pain as any probably all relationships experience when two families join together. Ours was not without many challenges, I was an outsider parent of three teenagers. I was met with passive resistance and rebellion as they moved in and out of friendships, relationships that kept them from growing into more mature adults.
The last three years I have had the privilege, honor and joy to raise two grand children without having the fetters of a working life outside of the home.
I met Harley and Kayden early in life, Kayden was almost three years old and Harley was just nine months old when we won their custody. What a joyous day that was for us and especially to me. I vowed to myself and them that I would not waiver in helping them grow to mature adults with a better chance in life than their parents or any of the other kids I inherited in this marriage. In face my thought was to stop the cycle of irresponsibility, caring and love for one another that creates a strong family bond.
That was three years ago in November.
Little did I know that my transition would be such a LARGE issue to the adults around me. Sure I knew there would be some resistance, unbelief, and at first all was well. The Children, being innocent, were never challenged, disappointed, unhappy or shocked. Rather a lesson to be learned is 'children are a blank slate', teach them the truth without adding bias, preconceived notions or expectations and they accept those facts easily. I found it easy to teach, love and guide them towards a better future until one day things simply 'blew all to hell' before my eyes.
Enter the adults, full of bias, preconceived notions and a definite lack of intelligence and understanding. I have spent my entire life fighting these kinds of people from influencing the next generation and felt confident I could protect these two girls from the 'same old story' that controls their relatives.
Mental Illness and Denial have entered into this life's equation.
I have suffered from Schizophrenia nearly my entire life but never really understood why I did, saw and believed things differently from those around me. I fought my life's battles without the help of parents who could afford to give me a better chance at life. But it was not until I reached the age of 44 that I fell into another black hole of mental illness, I became Bi-Polar due to stress and the professional world I drove myself so hard to succeed within. For a year or two I struggled to understand why I just simply couldn't stand back up and fight as I had always done in the past. But that would turn out to be only one of the many challenges I was about to confront.
In 1996 I met a young lady that made me reevaluate my previous years of marriage which were coming to and end. She was fresh, bright, hard working and fun to be around. I did not intend at first to fall for her but as time in my new position at work moved forward we began to bond as a couple. In 1998 I made my decision to leave my first wife and join her family. We met each other at a new assembly plant Cessna Aircraft started in our little town building single engined airplanes. I was a team leader on the manufacturing floor and she was a bright and talented metal worker that worked hard, we just naturally felt comfortable and found our future to be an exciting one together.
Cessna instituted and spent a million dollars in training all personnel to work in a 'Team' environment without the fetters of traditional 'boss-employee' structure and I was stoked at the chance of re-climbing the corporate ladder under this new innovative structure. I had made a success of my life in the Corporate world in Data Processing without the help or safety net of others and had seen the ugly side of Corporations so this held a new intrigue for me that I grabbed like a do with a new bone.
But like many things, old school die hards, eventually eroded, plundered and destroyed this concept thus putting me at odds with upper management. In 2001 I again felt lost, betrayed by business and individuals who felt greed and power being pulled from their hands, I quit and suffered a huge loss of confidence in society as a whole. I was now raising teenage children that were in no certain way trying their hardest to follow in my footsteps, rather they were running the other direction to 'reap the fun' and the future will be there when I get there mentality.
These kids had never had the benefit of a two parent family like I provided my first family and it was a fight for me. But not unlike all the other challenges I had faced, this challenge was not insurmountable. Over the next two years I would face the most excruciating experiences of my life. The three teenagers fought me passively by not competing in school, ditching classes and finding themselves in life situations that they got hurt within all the while defying good judgement that was being placed in front of them. Today, after growing a few years, they have found themselves poorly ready for the challenges in life ahead of them.
The results of this unpreparedness are showing now that they have families of their own and our struggles as a couple are about to take an unexpected turn. Those lessons unlearned result in 'imprisonment' and 'loss' of their two children to the State.
The last three years I have had the privilege, honor and joy to raise two grand children without having the fetters of a working life outside of the home.
My wife is her old self now that her medication has been corrected..... Love 'go figure'.
My two girls were taken from us by my wife's ex just after Christmas. A short visit has become our greatest battle together to recover those two girls from someone that beat, abandoned and endangered her 3rd child plus the years of alcohol addiction appears to be his last attempt to hurt her for all times.
Well the one thing that stands in his way is our love for those two little girls for the past three years.
