Judgment Day: A New Definition of Winning

I've been holding off on writing here, and for the few of you who have inquired about where I've been...I'm sorry!  Life has been busy, you know the drill..working (thank God), kids, feeding my insecurities..it's all so time consuming.

Here's something else that's been taking some of my creative mojo: The judgment from my case with Big Daddy came in.  It came in a couple of weeks ago, and I've been sort of processing it ever since.

Am I happy with it?  Well, I'm happy it's over.

I'm not entirely happy with the judgment itself, but to be honest with you I don't think any woman who has gone so long without child support, any woman who has lost so much and scrambled so hard to make ends meet would be happy with anything other than the a-hole ex-husband standing on her front steps with Scrooge McDuck moneybags in hand.

I'm naive. Optimistically naive. My view of justice is very black and white:  someone commits an injustice, they pay.  And in my Pollyanna world, they pay what they owe. They don't get four years to pay back four years of past due child support (interest free, too).  They don't get away with paying less than $50 per child, per month.  They don't get away with suddenly and mysteriously closing their bank account and start channeling funds through their wife's account.  To me, that's not justice.  That's a gray, blobby thing that doesn't even remotely resemble justice.  That's ten shades of shady, if you ask me.

But..I've been told by a couple of people that this judgment is a win for me, and more importantly, for the kids. Even though it's not close to what the kids are owed, it's something.  And I see the validity in this, I really do. I know that some of you who are reading this would give a kidney to get even ten minutes in court with the deadbeat who has robbed your kids of life's basic necessities.  I'm grateful for the pro-bono attorney.  I'm grateful for the chance to have my case seen and heard by a judge.  I'm grateful to have finally gotten even a taste of justice.

Most importantly? I'm grateful for the closure.

You see, this judgment is the final chapter in the seemingly endless child support saga between me and the father of my children.  It's the last keystroke in a lengthy story about a man and a woman and their little life together.

And for that, I'm grateful.  An ending, a conclusion, a swan song.  It's over.

It's finally, finally over.

For the past few weeks I've focused on what we didn't get.  The numbers don't add up, there is a pretty substantial amount of money that went up in smoke when this judgment was made.  That sucks.  But just like spilled milk, you can't cry over money that was never yours.  And so I'm drying my tears, I'm saying a prayer of thanks and I'm accepting this judgment.

I'm a firm believer in karma and the justice that we face outside of courtrooms...universal, spiritual justice. I believe that what you put out into the world is what you get back.  That's why, over the past few years, I've been trying my darnedest to put out good things.  I've been trimming the negative, the soul-draining and the poisonous.  Filling up the voids with light and positivity and most of all...with love. Because that's what I want to get back.

We can't choose what happens to us in this life. We can't predict who will come into our lives and what mark they'll leave.  We have no control over other people or the weather or gas prices or judges.

What we can control is how we choose to deal with all of it. For a long time, I let these things, these people and their actions soak into my skin like raindrops.  Big Daddy was a termite, and I was the wood.  Not anymore. 

So, thank you, Judge, for your time and for your findings. Thank you, Attorney Aladdin, for treating my pro-bono ass with respect and with kindness.  Thank you, friends, for putting up with my hand-wringing and pensiveness over the past few months.  And thank you, my lovely and resilient children, my babies, for reminding me every single day of what I should have known, and appreciated, all along:

I win. Every single day that I wake up and get out of bed...Every single day I share a laugh with a good friend...Every single day I spend time with my sons and my daughter...

I win.