I have had one hell of a year. I have managed to end this year by throwing myself into the drama surrounding the Justice Democrats, but my year started with something entirely different.

I have mentioned, but not been clear about, my ongoing drama with my ex-wife and children. This time last year, on the final day of 2016 I was riding high on hope. I had just broken the silence between my ex and I by showing up uninvited to her home on christmas eve with two bags of christmas gifts for the kids. They were still awake and were so happy to see me that night. By this time last year my ex had reopened communications with me and we had arranged to allow me to see the kids again.

Today I am awaiting a meeting with CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) who will be meeting with me in the new year to discuss this situation. How did things go so wrong in 365 days? How did I go from being filled with hope that things could be worked out between my ex and I to being filled with determination to see this fight taken to court and settled once and for all?

I cannot talk about specifics, and I can’t say anything that would endanger my case, but I can talk about my path this year. That path that I have traveled around the world is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15000 miles in length, by aircraft, car, train, and bus I have been across two continents.

When I look objectively at my year it looks like a very unfunny road trip adventure movie. Parts of it are supremely funny to me, but it is admittedly fairy black humor. So without further ado I would like to recount to you my 2017, in my own words, with as little sensoring to protect my case as possible. I hope you enjoy it, because for me it is a simple exercise to order my thoughts and justify my actions to myself.

January 2017 – This was a good month. I was reconnected with my children after months of separation. I had just stared a job at Barclays in Colchester. The staff and management of that bank are second to none. I made some true friends there. Everyone was mindful of my PTSD, and they cared about my wellbeing in general. Despite me being a crazy american who came out of nowhere, they accepted me into their lives and helped me as best they could. The management team were always there to support me and help me make sense of my personal life, and the act of working was doing wonders for my mental health.

February 2017 – This was a mixed month. On the side of it being an absolutely awesome month was the fact that my birthday and christmas gifts from my girl friend took effect this month. She took me to Hawksmoor Seven Dials restaurant. This was my first time I had ever had a Chateaubriand cut of meat, and oh did this change my life. I had gone my entire life thinking that the best beef was the domain of the United States. How wrong I was.

My girl also arranged a secret get away to Amsterdam. I sat by the canals, looked at the Van Gogh museum. This was also my first time tying to treat my PTSD with alternative methods, and again it was a life changing experience. It was as if my intrusive thoughts were behind a pane of frosted glass. The brains scattered on the concrete were less defined, the dead eyes of the slain were less clear, less disturbing. This enviroment was helping me more than any case of rum ever did. I was so impressed that when I got back to the UK I spoke to my doctor about the experience. I told her that I had done some research on the medical application of my experience in the new age shops and wondered if there was any programs in the UK which were testing this in people with PTSD. She told me there was not, so I tried to get into conventional counseling, and soldiered on.

On the other hand, I had training in London to do with my bank job. I had to take public transport my first time, and I had a major break down on the London Underground. I got out of the station, turned a corner and broke down in tears. I was a sobbing wreck, and luckily my partner was with me. She took care of me, kept on lookers away, and rolled me a cigarette to help focus my attention on something in the present to take me out of my memories.

Between my ex and I things were once again breaking down as well. Arguments started over how much child support I was paying and how often I saw the kids. I tried to make my ex understand that 500£ was all I could afford, and that saturday night into sunday was all I could do to take the children. I had only moved into the house that could accommodate them at the beginning of the month, and I had yet to fully furnish the house to support my five children.

March 2017 – This was a fairly normal month. There was a minor flare up regarding Easter. I had assume my ex, being a self professed christian, would want the children to be with her for resurrection sunday. I am not a christian, so I figured it would be the right thing to offer my ex my weekend with the children so she could share her faith with the kids on one of the most holy days of the year for christians. This caused a fight that I was unprepared for. It was assumed that this was some kind of plot to not spend time with my kids. I was shocked at this and reacted poorly. I brought up things that I was unhappy with, and I was not always calm and considered when I did so. Over all the drama was minimal, but when I look back the seeds of the coming catastrophe were planted in this month.

April 2017 – This was a stressful month. Email battles between my ex and I revolved around pick up and drop off times, but it quickly turned into accusations of abuse. I have no idea how it happened, and I can’t go into detail, but it made it to social services who really just shook their heads and told us to get along. Frustration built up and my work started to suffer at the bank. I had no idea what was going to happen next.

May 2017 – This month the battle began in earnest. At the beginning of the month my legal council noticed that my UK visa was predicated on my relationship with my ex, and because we were separated and going into the divorce I needed to renew my visa to be based on being the father of british citizens, my children.

I needed a court order, or a letter from my ex wife stating that I had contact with my children. I hired an immigration lawyer, and got everything in place for an emergency appointment to sort this out before my trip home to the US. The thing was I had never met my my niece who was in and out of hospital, and I had not seen my biological sister in almost a decade. I felt like this might be my only chance to know my niece, as grim as that thought is. I felt like I absolutely had to return home, if only to meet blood kin for the first and last time. I am not saying this thought was rational, but it was my feeling at the time.

I was met with a list. My ex made me a list of demands in order to give me the letter I needed. I agreed to the first list, and she presented another, so I agreed to that, and I was given another list. The high lights of the last list of demands were things like agreeing to changing the kids names, tripling the amount of child support I paid to her, paying spousal support to her, and giving up my legal parental responsibility. Obviously I could not agree to this. I had one last day at the sea side with my kids, told them what was going on as best I could, and kissed them all good bye. This was the 23rd of May. and it was the last time I have seen or spoken to my children.

June 2017 – Start of the Adventure month. I returned to the US on the first. Having failed to secure the letter I needed to renew my visa I had no choice but to leave the country of my own free with so that I would not be legally barred from entry in the future. My partner came with me, and together we got an RV, and drove cross country. We planned to dig up crystals and I decided I would get a house in Washington state and take this matter to the courts. I managed to get a 160K offer of finance with my VA benefits and I started to dig. I spent time in Maryland with my sister and her family, and I was really happy. Despite everything that had happened I knew I was surrounded by people who loved me and who wanted the best for me.

July 2017 – The month of the bombshell. We decided to spend the 4th of July with my sisters family. We were ready to head back north to continue our digging and I got an email. Included were 5 Deed Poll documents. I could not believe what I was reading. My ex had changed all five of our childrens names, and even changed the first name of one of my children. I knew that a Deed Poll meant nothing with out an associated court order, but the fact that she thought that this was enough to change the kids names scared the hell out of me. Because of the way visas work, I had to spend 90 days outside of the UK before I returned, so I put my house purchase on hold, and threw myself into my mining. I spent 6 weeks sleeping in a tent at Ace of Diamonds mine. Digging all day, eating as cheaply as I could, and saving up for the flight back to the UK.

August 2017 – The month of return. I had spent most of the month in the mountains, but the end of the month I figured that given my situation I could argue my way in to the UK if I need to. I had to get to UK courts to put an end to this, and lucky for me the UK Border Force seemed to be ok with my reason. By the end of the month I was back in my old rented home in the UK, my landlord at Sudburys property management being compassionate people. Even now they have offered to extend my rental agreement on a month by month basis so I can deal with my legal issues. I touched down, slept off the jet lag and got to work.

September 2017 – The month of legal action. I went to work, I could not work for money, I was only on a tourist visa, but I had a box full of semi valuable quartz crystals and lots of time. I set aside 300 dollars and got some silver and started to work with the metal and stone. I educated myself on the law and decided that it was so overwhelmingly on my side in this matter that I felt I could represent myself in court on this issue.

October 2017 – The long month of waiting. I had put things into motion, now all I could do is wait. I have to admit the waiting took a toll on my mental health. I started to have panic attacks about whether or not I was doing the right thing. I started to doubt myself, starting to think maybe my children were better off without me in their lives. After all, I have a mental illness, I am a physically damaged combat vet, what could I offer young children other than a view of a broken man?

November 2017 – The month of court. I had my day in court, and what a day it was. I cannot speak about what happened but everything went my way. I had my partners mother at my side for support and I did everything I could, presented all of my proof and it was accepted. I went away with a path to contact with my children, I just had to wait for the court appointed bureaucracy to act. The month ended with a wonderful thanksgiving dinner cooked for me by my partner, and things were looking up.

December 2017 – The end of an exciting year. Another court date was arranged at a higher level. Again, I cannot speak to what happened, but I left thinking I would be speaking to the kids by christmas. This did not happen. Because my ex accused me of being a murder I now have to undergo investigations to assure the courts that I am not in fact a murderer. Sure, I hold myself to account for my part in the deaths of hundreds of people in Afghanistan, but hat was combat, not murder.

I had two major breakdown in my mental health over the disappointment in not speaking to my kids for christmas. This time of year is hard on everyone with a mental health issue, and for me it resulted in some really disturbing intrusive thoughts. I had visions of me committing suicide in some pretty horrifyingly realistic ways. This put so much pressure on my partner that I had convinced myself that the only way to make her happy was to be gone. Obviously I was wrong, and she brought me around, but she knew that I needed to be working. The metal work had stalled out when I ran out of stones to fit into ear ring studs, but I needed to be active in some way. I needed to keep my mind busy.

So it was with this in mind that I restarted this blog, I got involved with the #ReinstateCenk issue, I wrote an open letter which motivated 1500 people to sign a petition.

This time last year I could not have predicted the court case, the trip to the US and back to the UK, me digging beautiful quartz crystals out of the ground, or me making silver and diamond earrings. I would have called you crazy if you had told me I would be in a position to speak for a large group of people, to be the mouth by which they expressed frustration with the Justice Democrats.

I have so much to be thankful for, so much to be proud of overcoming. I have my work cut out for me in 2018, but all I can see ahead for me is victory.

Thank you so much for reading my words, you may not know me in person, but the fact that I can look at Reddit, I can look at my stats on this blog and see that I am reaching people all over the world. For now, that is more than enough to keep me on an even keel, and whether you meant it or not, you readers have given me a reason not to do something silly. Because I have people following what I have to say, I feel I have a responsibility to keep going. I cannot let my readers down by doing something stupid. I cannot fail my children who do need me in their lives, even if it is only by Skype and cards on special occasions. I can be the fairy tail adventuring father, and I have to trust that for them, I will be part of a coming of age adventure where they seek me out and experience a life of digging gems out of mountains.

Here’s to 2018, which has no choice but to be better than 2017. Happy New Year everyone, and I hope I can continue to add my voice to the movement for peace and stability for all.

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Like this: Like Loading... Related