The Pursuit of Happiness

20.03.07

Today you would probably have been one step closer to what you wanted - more contact time with your son. You were due in court to report on the access visits to you son, or in this case the lack of them.

All you had to do was hang on and once you had presented the case notes and diaries for the continued obstruction that you were facing, there most probably would have been a movement in your favour. You had already gained some leverage last time as the judge presiding made it clear that your wife's allegations regarding your unsuitability as a trustworthy and competent parent were just that - unsubstantiated, untenable and unlikely - and that you were perfectly entitled to access to your seven year old son.

Were we in America, I would sue the bitch on your behalf - she was, to all effects and purposes, obstructing you in your pursuit of happiness and indeed that of your son. Let's be quite frank, it is not a sentiment I believe she could easily share nor indeed attest to as her very small and insular life revolved around exposing the misery in her own self and infecting others with it.

She managed to fool you too John, because you really believed that it wasn't all bad - the morbid twenty stone obesity of 20 years' standing blamed on everything else but her own lack of self will, control and exercising of free will; the delight at being officially registered as disabled because it meant that you "had saved a load of money on parking fees" (sic); the endless mithering about all the people she knew and encountered along the road and how not one of them had any redeeming features. Your friends' wives were tarts, or far too full of themselves - thought themselves too pretty or intelligent. Your own work colleagues labelled as untrustworthy or not bright enough, and your family deemed unfit to care for or be around your son.
This was always dressed up with some kind of faux religious rhetoric or old style working class value. It really does beggar belief. Her own life could be summarised easily:- no friends, no ambition, no self-esteem, but a host of reasons why it was always somebody else's fault!!

And then the flash points of illness which further restricted your life as you knew it - you missed major moments because of them - your graduation, family parties, days out, cancelled holidays - because she didn't feel like it; not well enough. You even left your mother in the last minutes of her life so that you could attend the call of Munchausens; I later discovered that you never really forgave yourself for that, and I am sure that it was a pivotal moment in all the emotional unpacking which started at that point two years ago.

And still there is more to recount about the seemingly moribund, but oh-so-still-alive-estranged-spouse:- The four day migraines - still able to get up and make food to be then consumed in the middle of the four day attack which left her bedridden and unable to do anything but eat and sleep. The Saturday and Sunday morning rest periods which meant after suxh excruciating part-time 20 hour week being rude to the public and moaning about the meanness of all around in her role as the world's most miserbale administrator, she then couldn't get up before noon - leaving you to your normal routine of caring for P from the moment he woke, or you woke him- which you loved and helped you create that amazing bond you shared; born out of many hours together from a very early age - starting with night feeds, when guess what, your incapacitated wife could not get up to feed her child!!

And yet there was no real diagnosis apart from asthma and morbid obesity - one a by-product of the other. Still no desire to change it though. You became resigned to that. Again an incredible irony as you were the world's fittest most health conscious man: gym, boxing, swimming, running and squash every week! We came to realise after you left that you had spent a lifetime eating ready meals as your eyes nearly popped out of your head when we presented you with home-made food; always asking its provenance and how it was made. And always surprised when you discovered it hadn't come out of a plastic tray or tin foil dish!

Food, apart from football, socialism, your own family and P was one of your life's major passions.

So you poor bastard, what life did you have before you escaped the clutches of a sociopathic hypochondriac - just your son, and your immediate family - and that was controlled and monitored from the armchair or the sickbed; just in case you would enjoy yourself too much or risk not being there to lavish attention and jump when beckoned at whim.

You left him behind and your fight to get to him was the focus of the last 16 months of your life; if only you had just kept going darling, your happiness was just around the corner.