I’m Not the Crazy One… I’m Not the Crazy One… I’m Not……….

Well, even though the golden rule is “no contact” when you’re dealing with a narcissist or sociopath, it’s impossible to follow 100% when you have children with one.

Clyde gets half the summer with our kids and my birthday falls in the middle of July. This year, Clyde has claimed the only week he could get off work just happened to be the week of my birthday. [coincidence? I think not…]

On one hand, we all anticipated Clyde would do this so it was actually a laughable moment when I got the letter stating which dates he wanted for the summer. Bingo! Since we’d already planned for it, it worked out great because I planned on going to Canada.

On the other hand, I knew this meant playing a little gambling game I like to call:
WILL CLYDE SHOW UP OR NOT?

It’s the same game we’ve played since the day I gave birth. The game play goes as follows:

• Clyde says he’s going to take the kids so I make my plans around his schedule. He usually makes these plans around a significant date that he assumes I’ll spend with other people.
• Then Clyde never shows up… He comes up with a plausible excuse so he looks like the good guy and I look like the unreasonable ex-wife.

Recently, some new rules have been introduced thanks to the courts:

• When Clyde doesn’t show up, I get upset about having to rearrange my plans once again and tell Clyde if our papers say he has to pick the kids up, then that’s his duty. I’m not putting my plans on hold or waiting for him.
• Clyde then goes crying back to the legal system with claims that I’m keeping our children from him.

So what’s Clyde’s excuse for not showing up this time around? …He said he accidentally took the wrong day off from work.

Clyde picked these dates almost 3 months ago and now claims he’s made another forgetful mistake. Either he has the worst luck and/or the worst memory of anyone in the history of the world… or he’s just a charismatic liar who continually gets away with it. After all, he’s not INTENTIONALLY being a prick as long as he sticks to the “I didn’t know” or “I didn’t remember” routine.

Anyway, I don’t know which chess piece Clyde might move next. There’s always a motive behind his tricks and it’s usually to punish someone, and that someone is me.

The plot:  Clyde knows our teenage daughter is both reluctant to fly and also to stay the summer with him. I assume Clyde’s using all of this to his advantage.

It seems like every move he makes is simply trying to land us back in court. I suspect Clyde knows that our children might not leave if he doesn’t show up. If that happens, not only will he cry to anyone who will listen about what a horrible ex-wife I am for keeping our kids from him, but he’ll likely use the sympathy he gains as a ploy to borrow someone’s car and drive up here.

I re-live the anxieties I felt from previous experiences each time I have to deal with Clyde so to cope, I’ll go through old journal entries and emails to remind myself that I’m not insane.

This email below was written after Clyde came to my house at some ridiculously late hour in 2008, crying to me about finding a used condom in my trash earlier that day. He said he wasn’t ready for me to move on yet and that I was being cruel by waving my sexual activity in face – even though I hadn’t told him anything at all about my dating life…. I hadn’t even talked with him. He only found out by stalking me and digging through my trash!

Besides, apparently Clyde already had a girlfriend he’d been seeing for 2 months by this point and rational thinking says he shouldn’t have cared who I was dating

I was so upset and freaked out when he admitted he’d been snooping through my apartment that I wouldn’t even discuss it with him. I sent him home and then wrote this email:

— On Tue, 01/15/08, Amy wrote:

From: Amy 
Subject: ...
To: Clyde 
Date: Tuesday, January 15, 2008, 1:15 AM 
Man that was a bunch of BS tonight. I've tried to stay
friendly and stay on good terms but going through my
house and my trash is unreal. You don't even pay child
support! We've been apart for nearly 2 1/2 years! The 
divorce would already be finalized if you'd had gotten
that paper signed earlier like I kept asking you to.
I didn't wave jack sh*t in your face. Telling me to be
more discrete??? WTF?! I don't even recall telling you
I saw **** this weekend. And I most definitely didn't
tell you he came over here! I was washing my sheets 
while everyone was supposed to be gone! I BURIED that 
condom so the kids wouldn't see. Again, this is MY 
house... not ours... mine alone. What I do on my time
is my business.
Those "feelings" you described tonight are exactly 
what I went through with you and ****... and
with those other girls, **** & **** in DC...
and then pictures of my own sister?!! I'm sorry but 
karma's a bitch, ya know? How am I supposed to have
any sympathy for you, *Clyde*, when all you did is 
put me through those "feelings" over and over again
for 12 years? And the second you dragged my sister
into your perverted fantasies and recorded it with 
all your other disgusting teenage, pornographic 
material... you sealed the casket, not me. You seriously
damaged me. Even if I wanted to work things out, my 
brain wouldn't let me be with you again. It was like
turning off a light switch. 
I can handle you as a friend, but that's it. And if 
you can't that, well I don't know what we're going to
do for the next 18 years. Personally, in my opinion, 
you just need to get laid by someone else. I don't know
what else to say. I'm just tired and really pissed off
right now.

• Posted in: My Evil Ex Story