Utterly Rantastic

If a blog affords a real benefit, it is in enabling the facility to rant and rave, rather than react - which for those that occasionally need a good rant, was the old fashioned response. Reacting in midst of rant is always a foolish approach and so on this blog, I am going to rant.

Divorce is really quite simple. You marry someone, it doesn't work and so you divorce. Simple. Except it rarely is, since divorce teaches you the side to that person that you failed to spot when you walked up the aisle. Logical really, since if you knew then, what you learn through the marriage - then the aisle is not the path you would have trodden.

What I learned in the divorce was that the trust I had placed in the integrity of the person I married, was misplaced. Yet despite learning that, I still thought that divorce makes people act in a most peculiar way and that eventually we all reach a place where honesty and integrity may reside once more, just in a different way. Apparently I am wrong in this assumption.

For some time, ex husband and I have appeared to have reached a place where we can get on. There have even been quite a few long telephone calls in which we have discussed a few things from the past, a few things about work, love, life and stuff. At one point, I even sought and received dating advice. In this call, he even conceded that I had demanded nothing from him when marred and had in fact, allowed him to behave selfishly. Apparently, he had never hated me, his anger a result of me thinking badly of him.

One such call which went on for hours, was cut short due to an overwhelming need on my part to faint. Ex husband called a nurse friend to seek advice and called me later to dispense it. Given that the Divorce was something we both wanted, it appeared that we were both now being quite civilised. I am no fool. Clearly there will remain a lot of unsaid things, most of which remain best left unsaid. However, he is regularly invited in for a cup of tea and last month, I even invited him to stay for supper, which he did. That one was probably a step to far and on the scale of weirdness - it notched a high score.

Still, all good so far. Accept I discovered tonight that what he tells others is something entirely different. So, I learnt many things this evening, such as my apparnet refusal to tell him anything about the children

One child is losing his sight. I called him straight after the opticions appointment. A consultants sppointment date was duly advised and ex-husband forgot about it. I know that, since 3 days after his son had mentioned he had attended said hospital appointment, he phoned and asked about it.

"Did you forget?" said I

"I thought you just meant around that date" said he.

Yet, it would seem that what he tells others is that I only told him at he very last minute, too late for him to do or know anything about it.

It gets better, I prevent him knowing anything about what goes on at school, prevent him being able to attend anything at school. Which is ironic since when we were married he never had anything to do with anything that happened at school. In 14 years of educating 4 children, I think he only attended 2 parents evening and not through choice. When he was informed that I would taking the school to task over disability discrimination, the Head called him in error. It was in he that called the Head to advise that I was the parent that he need speak to. At no point did he ever ask what had happened about it.

It is now 2 years since I fought the Education Authority at a special needs tribunal and I still have never been asked what happened. This in itself is no surprise - when a 17 page report on one child was compiled by Great Ormond Street and his parents asked about it - he couldn't comment since he hadn't actually read it and that was when we lived under the same roof.

So, he phones the other night to ask what help this child was getting at school. Clearly someone had asked him and decided he ought to know the answer. It is three years since this child starting walking into furniture and 2 months since a fairly tragic diagnosis and yet the first time his father has ever asked what support he gets at school. And yet this long, long history in not being involved or responsible for what happens in the lives of is children, is by all accounts, my fault.

As is the fact that he cannot stand the sight of me and cannot bear to be in the same room as me - or so he is leading his family to believe. So it certainly cannot have been him that sat down in my house last month and tucked into lamb, couscous and stuffed mushrooms. It cannot be him that is quite willing to accept an offer of a cup of tea when picking up or dropping off children.

It cannot be him, since he cannot bear to look at he woman that apparently also bleeds him dry. And boy do I, this is the woman that had to spend £17,000 to get the judge to make him pay £400 per month for 4 children to live in luxury. This is the woman that needed to buy a computer to enable her partially sighted son to use speech to text software and for the first time in 2.5 years had the audacity to ask for a financial contribution of an apparently eye watering £200.

This is the woman that accepted the line of "I can't, since I only have £13 to my name" and did not utter a word when he turned up 3 days later with a brand new lease vehicle. This is the woman knows that there will never be a time where he ever provides anything more than the legal minimum based on the minimum amount you can get away with saying that a limited company earns.

This is a women that at this particular moment is apoplectic with rage and has decide that it far better to rant via a keyboard than to open my mouth. It is remaining very tightly clamped, to the point of jaw pain.

Apparently ex-husband is really not happy with the fact that I am being invited to his sisters wedding. Since he has made it clear to all that he cannot bear to be in the same room with me, since he will be bringing the woman that he was unfaithful with and it will be the first occasion I get to meet the woman that refused contact with me when I was actually married, I can imagine that he may feel quite awkward.

Still, it seems that my invite will be a plus one. I was thinking of inviting the man that looks like him that sometimes drinks tea with me.

I profoundly hope that at some point in my life I meet a male that is genuinely capable of being a man.

Rant over. Reaction buried