Painted photographs

     I noticed 13-year old Julian, my son, was with facial expressions that were new to his demeanor… not emotional differences or attitude, no… it was simple expressions, like the way that he held his chin with his thumb and forefinger or a certain way that he smiled – it was his father’s traits.

    Last night we were talking and I noticed it again, something hit me and I asked “Is there something secret that I should know about? Have you spent time with him?”

Mind you it has been like eight years…

     He stared right dead on at me and stuck his arm out with his cell phone in his hand. I said, “What is this about?” He told me to read it… so we sat together on the couch from 11pm to 1am and read through all of the text messages and discussed them…

     What was there to discuss really, I mean it is a text… things like “I spent all afternoon fixing up your room” caught my eye of course. Like is that room for when you go live with him after he kills me or what exactly is the plan here?

     I have had to relive and repeat this story so many times today on the phone to the cops and abuse hotlines and God how many times in the past… to make it simple lets go over highlighted areas only:

    First thing comes to mind, I really could kick myself now for not taking up the offer when the shelter wanted to move the three of us and change our identity. They gave me a week to decide. I chose to stay and fight… noble but really not the best plan in the long run, obviously, because here I am again, 8 years later.

    Vengeance does not die until someone is dead, and yep I am still alive, the winner, the hated, the faulted, the walking investment of threats and thoughts of evil projections of strangling my neck or holding me against a moving tire or whatever form of torture suits him… perhaps that reoccurring dream that I have had for years would please him most… the one that I am in a parking lot and he comes walking over and shoots me. I have felt the bullets while sleeping through that dream many, many times… so I guess it is just a matter of time until it happens, till it becomes reality.

    Drama you say? Wish. It could not be that simple of course. He has stalked me for years. I guess I should have had a red flag when we were kids of 10 years and he pushed me down and jumped on me kissing me with me screaming underneath and a crowd of his friends and my friends standing around us. What was thought to be the boy next door crush turned out to be a sleeping with the enemy lifetime saga.

Owned.

Property.

    Living in Mexico was a blessing in that I was for the first time, not looking in my rear-view mirror to see if he was following me. I knew I was safe there, ironically… He would never go there or never find us, the ‘stupid bitch’ that he is.

    That is exactly what Ricardo called him once over the phone which promoted a chain reaction of death threats, car stealing, apartment stake out, police reports, overnight moving, and pulling the kids out of the school without saying goodbye – a suggestion from the abuse shelter to protect the other children and teachers – and being thrown into a new school under such precarious conditions as the “new children” with the secret issues… drama, sick of it.

    Our “case” was nothing short of a spotlight from a helicopter on a brawl in a crowd. There were at least half a dozen organizations with their hands rubbing all over the kids’ and my emotional break down, our fear, our panic.

     I can still remember every second of every luxurious moment. While living in the shelter I actually pushed a dresser in front of the door because I felt he would surely come busting in the door and kill us eventually. Our lives were on cameras at the ends of every hall, every parking lot, and meeting room… there were always 24 hour guards and gates, and questions and concerns and counseling a few times a week – all for over a year.

    I will never forget the little room I sat in across from the toughest personality of the 5 or so ladies that worked at the shelter. She was not tender and loving and comforting like the others. She was not trying to make friendly connections like a few of them did. She did not give out ego boosts or encouragement as I had received from all of the other ladies but her… then it was her and I who were to fill out the restraint order petition. I was a mess as I had to relive and describe at least a few abusive incidences that we could use to put on this paper for proof. So I used the time he threw me across the room in the chair that I was sitting in with Julian watching. I was calmly telling him that it was probably best that the kids and I leave to Pennsylvania because of his drug issues were causing us to be in an unsafe environment. He had recently locked the kids outside while I was visiting my grandfather in the hospital which incidentally died that day, because he was smoking crack with one of his hoochy mamas in the bathroom.

   This woman, this tough lady counselor, looked at me with all of my teary faced slobber going on, all broken and deranged, and she said “Do you have any idea what is normal anymore? Do you realize that you have no identity of your own? Do you know that the different things that you tell us are not how life is supposed to be?” I understood, but I was also feeling as though she did not know that I survived. Then she said, “You know what? The other girls and I were talking about you today and we see girls come in here all beat up with broken bones and all kinds of situations every day. You are the worst case we have seen in three years, we all agreed. You are a true blue abuse case.” I cried. I cried hard. Her words ring in my ears often.

   Three years prior to my stay at the shelter there was a story that was told of a woman who had children that the father killed on Christmas even because of court ordered visitation rights. He wrote her a letter from jail afterwards that told her that every time she would look in the mirror that she was to know that it was her fault that the babies were dead. It happened in the same city. I processed this as the case we were compared to.

    We didn’t take the change in identities because I was reluctant to give up WHO I WAS…Raquel, ‘the me’ side of me…

   There is a bit of irony in that in hindsight as I sit among my suitcase-dressers while my kids sleep on the floor next to me and my husband is in another country. What did I trade for our freedom and that possible new start? This?

    Yes, that is what I did because I wanted to be near my kids one day. And here we are tangled up in an immigration comedy skit with the brunt of the joke aimed directly at the kids and I – hardy har-har, how fucking hilarious!

     It was very important for the half a dozen government organizations to jump in and rescue us from dog breath and secure our safety at all costs, even offering to relocate us, wow. But now that I am married to my loving non abusive good parent Mexican, well fuck us right? Basically that is what it amounts to.

    All of the sudden the kids’ safety is not so important. So their education, health and whatever else the imagination can tack on there have been sacrificed – who the fuck cares.

    The government apparently only protects from psychotic American assholes when it comes to the American children… once the line has been crossed and their step father is not allowed to come to the beloved USA to protect them from the American asshole, lets just say it is “better for everyone if we just go live in Mexico” Right? Is this not the basic intention for our lives and for our safety?

    I am getting off track glory be, back to the present day and focus. I find out then that while I was on one of my “husband visits” with the babies for a month in Mexico, Julian established an ongoing “secret love affair” with this long lost turd of a man. Now I have to put my immigration issues aside and save my son, and the rest of us, from futher ruin.
   I told Ricardo last night on the phone about this new extra problem that we now face. Instantly he asked to speak to Julian. They talked for thrity minutes with Julian's tear streaming down his cheeks and many one word answers as Ricardo was speaking very fast on the other end. When the phone was handed back to me, Ricardo said a few things to me about how he felt. He is Julian's father. Ricardo has been Julian's father for most of his life and has done so with the best of parenting skills as a father. Now he is there and we are here and Julian is confused and we have a stalker and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that I can do about it all but "WAIT" some more, pretty LAME of my government with it's many "jump in to fix things up" organizations. WHERE are you all now?
   He has actually been picking him up and taking him places while he is out on his paper route... messaging him, and disregarding the restrait order or loss of parental rights. I do believe this constitutes a mini-kidnapping. Would I want a stranger taking my child places without me knowing about it? Certainly not. But what about a man who has threatened our lives and who has blood given influence over curiousity of my children who are stuck in this shitty immigration world of loss with the silver tongue of false promises.
All in the name of winning his loss back - the man he used to be... the God.

   I tell him, do you realize how much I would welcome some help in parenting? I mean do a reality check here. I would benefit greatly if I had more help. Buy the kids some things, take them on vacations and get them out of the house, great! As a matter of fact, this summer I would like to go see my husband in Mexico, but the kids don’t want to go and quite frankly I don’t have all that money for 5 tickets. If they had another parent to stay with would not that be the perfect set up for me?

   I do not take that “option” because it is not an option.

I will not sacrifice my children. He is a psychotic on paper, a soul owner and an identity thief. They will cease to exist as themselves once he gets to weasel in because they will become his puppets and they will be lost. No way

   The room he is building for my son apparently is for after he kills me, which has been promised on several occasions.

   This threat coming from a man who has been involved in 3 murders that he has told me about in drug or alcohol induced moments… a man who had to have his tendons sewn back together up his forearm which is scared like a cat-post. This is a man who has between three to ten arrest records in 6 or 7 different states each on the eastern coast…

   He is going to figure it out soon. I am either going to die, or be in for a huge ride, or another overnight move or something… I am so numb that I cannot even find the energy to imagine it, I don’t want to tonight.

    I just want my life back and my husband here and enough is enough already. I may consider moving back to Florida while we wait out the next however many YEARS till the waiver shit is finished. So fed up with all of this STUPIDITY you cannot even imagine!

Well if he kills me, it’s been real. Please make sure Ricardo gets his kids back.