Time wounds all heals...fourth pregnancy continued.

I can't talk about this in depth. It still is too painful. Here is the summary. After losing my job, getting very sick with Pneumonia, I was raped by my neighbor's boyfriend, and evicted from my apartment. All in the space of two months. The rape was not violent, it was more that I realized his intentions but feared if I tried harder than just saying no, I don't want to do this, I'm not comfortable with this, but not over and over, and not, apparently, with any kind of force behind it would end up with me being held down or beaten or hurt--not just violated. I didn't push him away, he was much bigger than me, and at the moment it was happening, I was trying, trying to figure out what I'd done to make him think I WANTED that...and yet trying to deny that what he was doing was rape. He was just making me have sex with him, I thought. He wasn't being violent about it, or threatening to hurt me, so it wasn't REALLY rape, right? Yeah, a few hours later after talking to my therapist, she explained that non-consensual sex--in ANY form--was rape.
So I had a nervous breakdown, basically. I couldn't sleep, I barely ate, and my family didn't help. I finally begged my mother to take in Draven because I was convinced if I could not protect myself, then he wasn't safe with me.
I moved in with a friend--a woman I had worked with--who told me the same thing had happened to her...only she was 11 and it was her stepfather...
She pretty much saved me--I had no one else.
My mother...took in my son...brought him to me to spend weekends with me...then as months passed, she took him away to another state. I was still too messed up to stop her. I was seeing counselors when I could, trying to find medication that would let me sleep and leave the house without freaking out every time I saw a man (I would think, he knows he could make me have sex with him and I wouldn't even fight back) and time passed.
She explained to me that she couldn't get healthcare for him unless I appointed her temporary guardian of Draven. I told her I wasn't ever giving up my rights to him, I would be taking him back as soon as I was better, and I signed the document, had it notarized, and mailed it back to her. Not, as I should have, directly to the court.
She doctored it to read I wanted her to be his permanent guardian.
I did not find out for 4 years.
All through that time, she would talk me out of getting him--she has a degree in social services, she teaches psych 101, adn she is a master manipulator. And I, at that time, trusted her more than anyone else, and believed everything she told me.
I believed her when she told me, as a teen, that my father's therapist had told her he'd molested my oldest sister, and that he couldn't make a report, but could tell her, and that was the reason why my mother and father were getting a divorce. My sister believed our mother when she told her I told her our father had molested me, and not to ask me about it because I'd kill myself.
She told me I just didn't remember being molested, but that I was. When I was 7. And that my sister had been molested at age 17.
I was molested at age 7. Not by my father. By an older girl at school. I finally told the teachers and they told my mother.
She never spoke to me about it.
She never even told my father.
I thought for years they never told her.
My sister wasn't molested by our father at age 17. She was raped while visiting a friend at college.
For some reason, my mother decided it was our father who did this to us. And for many years, both my sister and myself were convinced we HAD been molested, and had just repressed it.
I also believed my mother when she told me she talked to angels and could see the future. That is how much of a hold she had on me.
So for her to say, you aren't ready to be a mom again, you need to do this and this first. Then I'll give him back, I would never stand in your way...
I did everything. I finally said, you know what? I'm ready. I am coming to get him. Should I rent a car or will you pick me up at the airport?
She replied, if you show up here, I will call the sheriff. You have no right to him.
I hired a lawyer.
After $25,000, 3 lawyers and two courts, the judge decided we'd have to go to trial, because it was my word against hers, and we were both telling such different stories. Hers was I'd abandoned him on her doorstep and disappeared, and she wasn't surprised as I was crazy and probably off sleeping around and doing drugs (Hey, I did that when I was 20. I stopped a year before I got pregnant with Draven--and I only did it for one year!) and that I never tried to see him or take him back before then. Also she said Draven had special needs--no, he'd never been diagnosed with anything, it was just not anything the doctors could figure out, but everyone agreed there was something. Probably due to me taking drugs while pregnant or him being premature (neither of which was accurate in any way!!)
The court was in her state (Florida) and it was easy for the court to send someone to look at her house and check up on her--nothing obvious to them--and they decided to just leave things as they were since Draven wasn't being abused or neglected (as far as they could tell), and that I could see him when I wanted to.

How is it she could lie and lie and lie and the courts just ate it up? Because she just has that affect on people. It's like she seems to believe it so thoroughly that she doesn't seem aware she's lying. And if you are convinced you are telling the truth, others will assume you are.

I will talk about her again sometime...and refer to Draven...but I don't think I'll go into any more depth on this. It still hurts--the wound keeps being opened. Not many know what it is like to have a child you birthed and nursed and comforted be taken from you.

It is worse when you see him again and realize you don't really know him, but you love him, and dammit, you like him so much and it hurts that you don't have in your life every day.

I need to stop now, this is too painful. I don't like to cry at work.