I know I’m not the only person on the planet who, out of the blue, begins contemplating the state of her life while doing something completely normal and generally not thought provoking.  My pseudo-epiphany occurred while I was scrambling eggs this evening in preparation for “Breakfast for Dinner” night.  The mindless act of stirring eggs around in a skillet allowed me a few moments of mental downtime, the likes of which commonly entails me contemplating the state of my fingernail polish or the lack of luster on the kitchen linoleum.  Tonight, however, as I mechanically pushed the eggs to and fro, my senses became hyper-aware.  The aroma of cooking food assaulted me as though I’d never been exposed to it.  I snapped my head from side to side and was surprised by the striking contrast of the gleaming white and vivid red of my cook-space décor, almost as if it hadn’t always been that way.  I peeked over the bar into the living area and smiled at the sight of my white couches littered with pillows of purple, the floral area rug bathed in spring colours, the brass lamps and cherrywood tables.  My daughter was sitting in the middle of the floor, iPod headphones shoved in her ears, earnestly copying the lyrics of some song into a fat pink notebook.  I had seen these very things a hundred thousand times and yet, in those brief seconds, I had seen it all for the first time. 

  It seems so selfish for me to try to get your attention by saying that our lives are difficult.  Everyone’s are.  I feel somewhat inclined, however, to assume that ours are difficult in a way that most wouldn’t understand. 

  I want to tell you first about the times that I thought were good.  My daughter and I lived in quiet repose, concerned with the simple normalities.  I went to work and hated my job, but the money and benefits were good.  She went to private school and was involved in sports.  She had trouble with math but excelled in writing and music.  We went out of town on the weekends to the state capitol where there was more fun to be found than in our own town.  We were used to fine dining and expensive fun.  I can hardly recall saying, with much seriousness, “We can’t afford that…”  We were the envy of a lot of our friends.  We were solid, stable, happy, and safe. 

  The nightmare began as a simple dark dream two years ago.  My little girl’s donor of genetic material, after ten years of being an indigent drug abuser who liked to engage in physical violence to the point of arrests, surfaced and demanded his rights to his daughter.  In my naiveté I trusted the system –the same system that crows over child welfare- to save my angel from the hands of a man who had abandoned her and threatened worse.  How could I have realized then that the system would overlook his violence, his drug and alcohol abuse, the allegations of pedophilia, and his documented mental illnesses, and instead clap him on the back for finally giving a shit?  Who in their right mind would have seen that coming?  And who in their right mind could imagine that he would be given unsupervised visitation with the child he’d never met?  And who could imagine that they would look the other way when he sent me emails telling me how “hot” she is, when he became abusive and threatening, when my darling suffered a nervous breakdown and was prescribed anti-depressants at the age of 10?

  More enraging was the attitude of the justice system.  Instead of working to prevent his hurting her, they blamed and reprimanded me.  They insisted that her breakdown was due to my inability and unwillingness to force her to love her father.  They sent ME to counseling.  They threatened to put me in jail when I did what any mother worth a damn would do… keep her child from having to endure the emotional trauma by allowing her to forego visits with the person who hurt her.  I promised my daughter from the time she was old enough to comprehend that I was there to protect her from the monsters or die trying, and I’d be damned if I would break that promise because some asshole in a robe pounded his gavel. 

  It would take me months of continuous typing to impress upon you all that my family has endured, and still then the words couldn’t convey the pain.  The judicial system being the piranha it is has sucked the marrow out of our bank account.  Attorneys have been a necessary evil because I found out the hard way that I couldn’t take on the bleeding heart fathers-righters on my own.  Because of this necessity our lives have changed dramatically and the difference has forced us to struggle to come to terms with our new normalcy.  Our closets, once full of designer clothes, are a bit sparse.  Sometimes we troll Goodwill for stuff that might be fashionable once tweaked… and we do a pretty damn good job of keeping up the appearances.  Home-cooked meals have replaced our eating out.  My little girl doesn’t get new toys like she used to.  I don’t get my nails done and she doesn’t see the stylist anymore.  Sometimes I worry about the rent getting paid, and other times I lament over the utilites disconnect notices.  I had to change my phone number when the collection agencies were calling my house every hour. 

  The monetary loss has been startling, but the emotional losses have been most devastating.  My little girl has problems trusting.  I sometimes wonder if she blames me for what’s happening to her.  Her father calls the police on us so frequently –sometimes accusing me of abuse, and other times accusing me of any number of vicious attacks on his property- that I’m on a first-name basis with many of the officers in our district.  They know that the reports are false and are perfectly nice when they come, but she still shies away from police now.  Every time there’s a knock at the door I see her jerk a little.  I know she fears that one day they’ll arrest me, no matter how many times I explain to her that it will never happen.  We’ve had to become conscious of how we spend our time, forever logging our whereabouts so that the police know I’m not guilty of whatever new crime I’m accused of.  Some of the circumstances have led the officers to believe her father watches us, and so we are forced to “travel in packs”.  She can’t go out alone and we never go out at night.  Our sense of security has been robbed from us. 

  It’s hard not to live life in the shadow of its occurrences.  When all you’ve ever known so drastically changes it’s hard not to wallow in the sorrow, and it’s so difficult to find the beauty when all that is readily apparent is grey.  It has taken me a long time to stop seeing our situation as desperate and detestable, but every day I learn that the hardship has taught us valuable lessons.  When I had to sell some of my favourite pieces of jewelry to make the rent I saw that ornamentation was far less glorious than having a warm home.  When our cable was turned off I discovered that my little girl and I can have fun playing cards all night.  When I told her for the first time, “We just can’t afford that right now”, and she looked at me and told me “It’s no big deal,” I knew she loved me for who I am and not what I could give her.  In all of this time the constant has been that we are together… and that can’t be stripped from us. 

  So tonight, as I surveyed the surroundings that had become somewhat bleak over the past two years and saw them as unimaginably beautiful, I was struck with the thought that we can lose every THING.  Our way of life can become somewhat unrecognizable, and yet our love and togetherness will make our house a home no matter the circumstances.