TheBanyanTree: Since you asked

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 6, 20000000000004


Dear everyone,

	Cecil asked me what was going on with my 
husband/ex-husband/David.  And I wrote to him privately describing 
the goings on.   I'd sort of kept much of this to myself because I 
don't like to poison the well, but when I asked Cecil, he thought I 
should post my letter to him to the whole tree.  And, so I will.  He 
told me I shouldn't keep all this locked up inside.  And he's right. 
There isn't enough room in here to house it without shunting a kidney 
or two to the side.  So here it is.  An incomplete, but exhausting 
account of what's going on, as told to Cecil Talley, one of the 
sweetest guys on the net.

>
>Tobie, I have been wondering about the situation regarding David. 
>Can you bring  me up to date?
>
>Hugs, Cecil
>

September 5, 200000004


Dear Cecil,

	The situation is awful.  I really think (and my lovely 
daughter thinks even more so) that when David hit 65 he had some sort 
of psychotic break.  He walks, he talks (in a monotone), he acts 
(out), but there is no soul in there now.  It's eerie and terrible, 
and yet he is functioning fine in his professional oeuvre.

	The kids still don't want to have anything to do with him, 
and he, of course, blames me for it.  He won't admit out loud that he 
abandoned anyone, because as he seems to put it he was willing, even 
eager, to drive kids to school.  He doesn't connect what he did and 
how he did it with the grief he sees in them, the anger they express, 
the wretched depression it's caused for me.  And I really think he's 
getting a little charge out of making me miserable.  He does things 
covertly, still won't give me his address, isn't thinking of the 
consequences of his actions.  He asked for a divorce by having me 
served with papers on a Shabbos evening.  It wasn't necessary.  He 
takes pot shots from behind a tree.  What a coward.  It grieves me, 
Cecil.  It just grieves me.  I spend so much time on the verge of 
tears, or absolutely in tears.  Torrents come out of me and it 
doesn't seem that it will ever cease.  Is there no time when I'll 
have poured my last glass of salt water?

	The latest worry is about health care.  If we get a divorce, 
I will be taken off of his health care plan at the lab, and I know I 
will not be able to find an insurance company that will take me.  Too 
many pre-existing conditions.  To throw me out into the world without 
health care is really life threatening.  And I have to ask myself if 
David is crazy enough to do this to me.......to "so what" me.  The 
alternative is to get a "legal separation" which is everything except 
the title "divorced".  You divide up the property, you have child 
support and alimony, the whole nine yards, just no "divorce".  In the 
eyes of the law, you are still husband and wife even if you never see 
each other again.   He blanched when I told him about this.  There is 
something seductive about the word, "divorce", for him.  He wants 
this so badly.  Is he willing to kill me for it?

	He thinks he is above reproach, and nothing could be farther 
from the truth.

	I haven't gone into the difficulty of raising two handicapped 
kids.  They are wonderful, wonderful kids, but it's so exhausting and 
so hard to be advocate for them in this lousy system.  It's so 
unfriendly to special needs.  I have to be a warrior and am doing 
100% of the work instead of the 95% I was used to.  And there is just 
one too few people in the family now.   You just have to get tired of 
the same faces all the time, and not enough different world views. 
Now we have Madame arts, but no Doctor science.  The kids need a 
father, and I just can't supply one for them.  I look at them 
mourning the demise of their safe lives and there is nothing I can do 
about it.

	I've written endlessly about all this and lots more in my 
journal, but I've spared the Banyan Tree from having to trudge 
through all this shit with me.  There are limits to what I'm willing 
to exhale into the www.

	Did I tell you yet that David suddenly refused to reimburse 
me for expenditures for the kids?  I'd given him a list a couple of 
months ago, itemized and pathetically fair.  Not one item was for me, 
just for Meyshe and Feyna.  Lessons, therapy, tutors, all things we'd 
agreed upon when we were together.  We had a system and it worked.  A 
credit line on the house to pay for the things we don't have the cash 
flow now to afford.  I'd pay out and write up the list, and then he'd 
reimburse.  Not right away.  He'd always make me suffer and beg for 
it, ask him a hundred times and sound like a nag.  (nags are not 
born, they are made).  So, right before he left for Greece for three 
weeks, he came over and told me that his lawyer advised that he look 
into this itemized list before paying me.  I am on disability, and 
David earns about 130,000 clams a year.  Where am I going to get the 
money to pay for our upkeep?  I was shocked and told him that it 
wasn't honest what he was doing.  That he'd best look at himself hard 
and ask himself what he's become.  But he's going to make this a 
battle while claiming he's a nice guy.

	I'm spent.

	I'm scared, too.

	Love,

	Tobie

You think I should send this tome to the group?

	--------------------

	You think that's all?   Ho ho ho.  I held a match to the tip 
of the iceberg.

	Okay, friends and lovers,  that's my factual account with 
some extra tears thrown in.  My best to you all.  Go out and play 
now.  It's labour day.  Don't labour.

	Love,

	Tobie
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net

-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net