For me there's always there's always this thought thread: this is all my fault. I hope the rest of you are better adjusted. I know in my brain that a sane person just gets a divorce and doesn't "abscond" as the judge put it. I couldn't control what he did. He's a grown up even if he's acting like a teenage petulant twerp. I think I'd just conditioned myself to approach the relationship as me being some sort of mood stabilizer for him, protecting him from all the things he found annoying or didn't like. Heck, I even ordered the pizza so he didn't have to talk to the delivery guys. I did the driving if we went somewhere together because he found it so frustrating. I even flagged down the waiters and waitresses because if he tried and couldn't get their attention, the rest of the day he would be in a brooding bad mood.
It never worked. I'd had a marriage, the large portion of which, I'd spent knowing that he didn't like me. The sentiment actually had varying degrees of intensity. Sometimes it was just side comments to my spoken thoughts, often he would respond to something I said or did by muttering under his breath so that I could just barely understand the nasty things he was saying about me in sotto voce for some imaginary audience. That was the worst. One day, Kai noticed the mumbling and asked him what he'd said. Theo viciously snapped, "Mind your own damn business."
Many times Theo used eye-rolling or cutting sarcastic remarks to respond to things that I did without meaning and sometimes to or things I had done with complete intention. "Could you please use that big brain of yours and remember to turn off the light." It could have been a light-hearted way to remind me, but his emphasis on "big brain" was dripping with sarcasm. He thought I was stupid. Often. Constantly. Consistently. Then rarely or dramatically, he'd flip-flop his opinion and proclaimed me smart but purposefully being stupid or lazy. He accused me of forgetting something or making a mistake as deliberate attempts to anger him. Even the children's bowel movements seemed to have an agenda. If I didn't do what he wanted me to do, it was because I was too stupid to understand or because I was smart and purposefully trying to screw him over and he wasn't going to be played the fool. He seemed oblivious to me and what part I played in the family. I had to prove to the court a few times that his narratives were false -- like the fact that I payed for my own education and even that I earned the money for the adoption of Jasmine. He'd construct negative narratives of my activities and despite all the evidence to the contrary, carry on as if his imagination were reality.
If he found a mistake of mine, he's say, "Did you intend to leave the refrigerator open?" And he'd honestly be waiting for my answer to see if I had intended to do this. He treated wait staff in restaurants or stores really poorly and abruptly.
Why didn't I see it? It happened gradually, small enough at first to blame on bad days or specific issues. It just got worse every year though.
People commented on how he talked to me and treated me. Polite and distant were generally the nicest things. The last time I remember him saying something unreservedly nice, was when we were being interviewed and screened to adopt our daughter from China. He said I was smart. I remember being stunned. We had a little renaissance in our relationship a few years ago, but even then his complements seemed to be for an audience.
I don't want to get into the deep details about the nature of our relationship at the very start, maybe some other time. I do mention it in passing because I did want to say that I entered the relationship as the junior partner in the relationship. He's ten years older than I am (and mentioned it all the time; he felt old), he'd had a successful career, co-founded his own multi-million dollar software company, owned a home previously, and so on. Pretty impressive to a bohemian art chick like me. So, I guess he started out with a lower opinion of me. Maybe I encouraged it by looking up to him at first, and it never really changed. I think it really bothered him that I got through school and then crawled through one class at a time for my MS. He frequently talked about his inability to meet the language requirement of Carleton College because of a learning disability that they would not recognize. He was very bitter about that, but always finished the story with the anecdote of JPL hiring him before he graduated. In today's schools he would have been a computer science major -- the major didn't exist then, so he was officially a mathematics major like me.
I spent a lot of our marriage trying to be a good wife, trying to make it work. I knew then and know now that that doesn't really work. Sometime toward the end of our marriage, I realized that I'd never make him like me no matter what I did. At once I felt free. If there was no possibility, why the hell was I trying so hard? Screw that. I don't think my new attitude was popular. Right after I'd consciously recognized that he didn't like me, he was yelling that he had married me thinking that there might be some hope that I'd grow up, but apparently I wasn't going to and he was tired of waiting.
Enough of all that for now, I feel like I've been in a sauna sweating out impurities.
In the last post, I ended with Tricia's email which contained more exclamation points than .... actually I think that's the most exclamation points I've ever seen in a letter. As I said above, I was conflicted, feeling like it was my fault, feeling stupid for feeling that, furious with him, worried that he was dangerously out of his mind, and wondering what the hell was going on. I steeled myself to be diplomatic for many reasons, but one big one was that I didn't want to sever ties to his family. Cutting these ties could be the end not only to knowing what was going on, but also to that side of my children's family.
When I did tell the kids about Theo's action, I assured them that they still had their aunts and uncles and grandmothers. I thought I was telling them the truth, but it became quickly evident that the aunts and uncles washed their hands of the children when Theo left. Maybe time will change this fact. This was one of the emails that I wrote while chanting the mantra, "Don't burn bridges, don't burn bridges."
from Rachel Drummond rachel.drummond@gmail.comAnd then the response.
to Tricia Davis <triciasdoghouse@yahoo.com>
bcc "TheUkids@aol.com" <TheUkids@aol.com>
date Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 2:42 AM
subject Theo's Welfare
mailed-by gmail.com
7/15/10
Dear Tricia,
I understand you are angry with me and I have read your reasons for
feeling this way. However, your information is one-sided and
factually incorrect. Since you and I have had only one conversation
in over a decade, it isn't unreasonable to have formed your opinions
from Theo's point of view.
But, I am divorcing Theo, not you. I do not intend to discuss my
relationship to Theo with you.
That said, I am trying to keep you informed. You have the contact
information to verify everything, I don't ask that you believe me.
Rachel
from Tricia Davis triciasdoghouse@yahoo.com
to racheldrummond@gmail.com (Yes, this is you.) Learn more
date Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 8:09 PM
subject your side of the story
mailed-by yahoo.com
signed-by yahoo.com
7/15/10
I am more than willing to listen to your side of the story. However, most of my information , has come from you. You are the one who told me you slept until 4:00 in the afternoon. You are the one who told me you were a night person and played on the computer and with your photography until all hours of the night. You are the one who told me you don't clean, cook, etc. You are the one with a Masters degree in Math , and yet , you are the one without a job. You told me this...so where am I wrong? Didn't Theo pay the bills, do the cleaning, do the cooking, etc? Remember...you are the one who told me these things. If you are rolling in dough and Theo was mistaken concerning the state of your finances, please enlighten me. I am a divorcee. When my husband left me with a 5 month old baby girl, I raised her . I got $50.00 a week child support. I cooked , cleaned, ran her everwhere, paid for her clothes, etc. I worked one full and one part time job so that I would not loose my home. Excuse me for not understanding why you would not get a job and help Theo . You are right many of my opinions have been due to what Theo has told me. However, most of them are due to what you have told me. Tricia
What? What? What planet is this woman living on? Did she even know us?
I wonder if she knew that Theo wouldn't let me handle money because he didn't like that I rounded up outgoing money to the nearest dollar and rounded down deposits. It bothered him to no end that I didn't know to the penny what I had. In December, I would always "close" out my account and have about $500 for Xmas spending. It drove him nuts.
He wouldn't let me do laundry because I did it wrong. (When he shrunk my sweaters it was because the label was wrong or I couldn't expect that he'd take it out before the load went to the dryer.) By the time became clear later that I wasn't shrinking his clothes, he'd been gaining weight, he'd already cemented in his head that I did the laundry wrong.
He fumed when I went shopping because I should know that "pork" means tenderloin not chops. If Iknew anything about our cooking schedule, I'd know he needed one clove of garlic not three, do I want to spend all our money on letting food rot? After a while I blew my top on this one: Write a clearer list or go shopping yourself, jerk. Even non-food shopping was always contentious. He wanted itemized lists from me and explanations and permissions for purchases whenever I did shop. He even made me do three months of this with the judge who determined that I wasn't a crazy shop-o-holic.
Cooking? Yes, he was the one cooking because he asked to do it. He wanted to do it. Even he got mad at people who thought he was being forced to cook because I was lazy or incompetent. It was his hobby and he liked it. I could tell he was getting really depressed when he stopped being interested in cooking. I called his family when he showed those depression signs. When we met, I said I liked fixing things, construction and maintenance. He liked cooking but felt he couldn't do it in his first marriage, so he often talked about it being liberating that he could cook now. I enjoy cooking once in a while, but I'm just as happy with a chicken salad sandwich and an apple as I was with a fancy meal. Of course years of being "monitored" while I was in the kitchen (even the kids would ask, "Does daddy know you are in the kitchen?"), I spent the first few weeks of his absence using all the kitchen gadgets. I'd go through the kitchen, touch the tip of my index finger to a forbidden appliance, and say "Touch," in a soft, sweet and naughty voice.
But if I had a dollar for each time he jammed the garbage disposal and I unjammed and cleaned it out, I could have bought the replacement garbage disposal. He would have done the same thing to the vacuum had he ever used that. The man had no concept of how suction worked. His default action was to blame bad construction for a broken item and tried to buy a new one. The money I saved him just in appliances was impressive. Grrrrrr.... The sadder thing. It's not just Tricia saying that I did nothing. Theo said the same thing to the CFI, said that he maintained the house. I think he believed it too. Even after I proved to the CFI and court that Theo owned no tools, had never cleaned or unclogged a toilet, hadn't even used a hammer in I don't know how long, Theo still maintained he was the one "maintaining" the house.
Cleaning? Well he'd wash his pots and pans because he didn't want me to touch anything in the kitchen. He'd come and re-arrange the dishwasher after I'd load it up. If I wanted to sharpen a knife, he would send me out so that he could do it right. His method of cleaning up after the kids was to pile their things on my chair so that I would realize I needed to do it. Later he just complained, yelled, whined and brooded about mess but had no interest in doing anything about it. I don't think he'd even entered his children's rooms during the last five years.
And yes. Yes, I am a night owl. If one is expected to be the only parent during all the children's waking hours, alone time happens when they are asleep. Early morning, late night, whatever. I deserved some time to myself. Oh wait... I forgot. The made sure I got some "me" time. Once a month, after I got all the kids home from school, Theo would look at the clock -- it would be about 4:30 -- and say, "Why don't you get some time for yourself? Be back at 6 for dinner." Whee. I feel so spoiled. On the other hand, I had to keep the kids out of his hair when he was working (because he was working and needed to concentrate) or when he wasn't working (because he deserved a break after working). He only had time to himself. It was a treat for the kids that he'd come down for dinner or that he might watch a television show. He wouldn't participate in any holiday but Thanksgiving and even birthday parties hosted by us, he'd agree to make food or a cake and sometimes talk to the other parents. He'd say it wasn't fair to "kick us out of the house" all the time, but he flatly refused and told us to get out of the house.
And as I went through her letter fuming... WHAT? Wait, WHAT? Re-reading:
When my husband left me with a 5 month old baby girl, I raised her . I got $50.00 a week child support. I cooked , cleaned, ran her everwhere, paid for her clothes, etc.
Her husband left her... with a single infant who had no special needs and he actually gave her child support... and she is writing me these letters about how I'm at fault?
What?
Is she insane?
I thought someone with her history would have been the first person whacking his sorry ass back home or at least to write a check for his kids.
As I recall from stories, her father her left when she was a child and her stepfather, Theo's father, also disappeared when he was small. Tricia's around ten years older than Theo, so she experienced bad fathering as a child, teenager and mother. I guess she has no other experience of what fathering is supposed to be.
This is when I threw up my hands. I decided to report Theo as a missing person and began the process with an interview with a Sheriff's deputy. The deputy sent this to Tricia.
from ******@dcsheriff.net
to "triciasdoghouse@yahoo.com" <triciasdoghouse@yahoo.com>
cc "rachel.drummond@gmail.com" <rachel.drummond@gmail.com>
date Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:58 PM
subject Theodore Petersen....
hide details 7/16/10
Tricia,
My name is ******, and I am Deputy with The Douglas County Sheriffs Office, out of Castle Rock, Colorado - currently assigned in Highlands Ranch.
I just spoke w/ Rachel Drummond. She reported Theo as a Missing Person. She showed me several emails related to this incident, including exchanges between you and her.
Can you call me at (303) ***-****? I'd like to talk to you about Theo, before I officially list him as a Missing Person.
Thank You in Advance.
- ****** Douglas County Sheriffs Office
Please pass on this blog address. Six degrees of separation dictate that someone you know that they know that they know that... they know probably knows where he is. I'm putting in links at the right which will make information navigating easier. Also, I'm linking in my eBay site if you want to buy things. I think I'll start labeling the stuff that used to be his. All the smutty comics are his ... because I'm keeping a hold of all of mine, they're art. And of course the Quilt pics.
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