Dealing

Every other weekend, summer vacation, alternating holidays... do you guys recognize this? Welcome to the life of custody arrangements.

I have been sharing custody of my 4 children for a while now and I feel like it should be somehow getting easier, but it’s not. Every time they leave me I go down this very sad path and am snappy and depressed and I just feel like a half of a person. There are no words to describe the aching of joint custody. You just can't know unless you have experienced it. I truly believe that joint custody does not serve the children. It is a cop out for the courts so that they can feel they have been "unbiased". I am a strong believer of relationships with both parents. I just feel there are better ways to accomplish that. It's like they are little drifters going from "moms" to "dads". It breaks my heart over and over that they rarely say home. Decision making is a horrendous. Consistency is nonexistent. There seems to be no way to protect them from the sorrow, even if you put on a brave face on transfer days they seem to feel your pain, probably because they feel it too.

My children and I have a very strong bond. Especially my oldest son. When he leaves to his dad I go that snappy, depressed stage. I just can’t help my eyes tearing up even though I try my best to hide what I’m feeling. When he comes back to my house it is like reprogramming to what he has been used to the first 6 years of his life. Trying to get things back to normal as much as I can. All of you that live without your children for these little spurts of time know exactly what that feels like. Its heart wrenching and very hard to cope with. I'm not always good at handling my life when my children aren't around - my heart aches for them, literally. Some things in life we don't want or choose and separation/divorce brings about conditions that we may not like. Anything can be rewritten, but right now we have no choice unfortunately - it’s a case of making the very best out of a bad job and I believe most parents have a remarkable capacity to do just that.