Heartless

In this case, to be left without a heart. Also, the state of being vicious.

How do you recover from a betrayal so profound you never could have conceived? Five years ago my wife was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. She had surgery to remove the cancer that almost killed her. An incompetent or possibly malicious surgeon didn’t help by any means. She was permanently disabled. And will never be the same. Her health has gotten gradually worse since.

2 years ago, my then 17 year old daughter was a senior in high school. She was not a bad kid by any means. She did not like doing her chores at all. But lately things had starting getting out of hand. She had a boyfriend and was spending more time with him. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she was lying and causing issues to spend more time with him. Two big instances come to mind.

First, she went to her boyfriends house to have breakfast with his family. No big deal. We did have plans later in the day to get some things done. She said shed be home by 10. Which rolls around and she wasnt home. We call and she makes an excuse and will be there by 11. This of course happens for hours until the things we had planned were no longer possible.

The second was when she was at her boyfriends really late, we tell her to come home, and she says her best friend, who is her boyfriends cousin, broke up with her boyfriend and is in a bad way and needs her right now. This becomes an all night thing. She stayed at her boyfriends home that night.

Both things of course triggered corrective action. Grounding, etc.

I happened to injure myself. 3rd degree burn. Was out of work for a bit. I was getting a short term disability but though it was enough to live on, I told her she needed to pay her bills, car insurance and her phone bill which she had agreed to to have those things, but had never really started doing. She was supposed to go with her mother to the chiropractor and told her mother that it wasn’t her responsibility to help her with her wheelchair, or drive her. I slammed the door and left. I texted her and told her that I’d be having her keys as soon as she got home.

Then I got a bit of a shock. Apparently my sister in law helped her stage a runaway. She had called her mother and told her that the police office at the school had seen me grab Savannah by the collar of the shirt and yell at her till she cried. Who then was so inconsolable that the police officer called her as the person of record with the school. So she was just going to let my oldest daughter stay with her for a while.

This was, of course, idiocy. I hadn’t taken her to school. We called to school resource officer who said it was malarky. But apparently some of the teachers had been told there was an issue which was why she was leaving. I find this out while at a doctor appointment for my youngest daughter and my wife calls me in near hysterics. Meanwhile she shows up at home, refuses to speak to her mother, and takes some things. My wife’s sister and a friend of hers attempt to stir up trouble, and my wife kicks them out.

My youngest daughter is quite upset. And walks down to the park next to where we live and calls her sister. The aunt answers the phone and tells her to call the police and tell her that her mother is holding her against her will and is suicidal. My daughter wants nothing to do with either of them anymore.

At this point I have a choice to call the police to go collect Savannah and have her returned. But shes two weeks from her 18th birthday. And honestly, its just not worth it. Shes been a horror to my wife for months. She constantly antagonizes her younger sister. We let her go. Hope we can make things better with some distance. We got to her graduation but she won’t even speak to us.

Two years later, yesterday she just graduated from community college. I truly hope the best for her.

Do I?

I don’t know.

How do I really feel about someone who abandons her family, lies about them, drags their name through the mud(because my sister in law called Child Protective Services, after her entire family turned on her for what she had done.) We had to endure a lot of stress for a very long time because of that. Also, my daughter’s birth mother, who had been friends with us since months before my daughter’s birth. Cut all ties. Assumingly at my daughter’s request.

My wife rarely goes long without feeling absolutely heartbroken for the whole thing. Every date that facebook brings up a memory brings tears for her. Those who still wish to have a relationship with my daughter do not condemn her actions of course, because they know all to well she will cut them out as well.

So how can I feel really? Sometimes I just sit numb. The sad thing is that without my oldest daughter around to repress her my youngest daughter did much better.

In one of the few times she engaged with her mother after the initial incident, she told her mother that we only wanted her around until we had a real child. That now we just wanted her around to do work. That most parents paid all their kids bills until they were married and she shouldn’t have had to pay anything.

I was adopted. We loved her every bit as much as our younger daughter. Kids need to have chores so they are prepared for life. Kids need to learn to pay their own bills.

The more I have heard from other people since she left the more narcissistic and disrespectful she sounds like she has become.

My wife has been in the hospital several times since this. She never visited once.

I need to realize that the person I thought my child was is dead. Someone else now claims that name.

So that person is now dead to me as well.