DENIED!!!

Isn't it interesting how one simple word can make your day bright and beautiful? The word "denied" generally has negative connotations. Today, it is the most positive word I have ever heard. It renews my sense that sometimes (though not often enough I'm afraid) justice can prevail. It secures within me a sense of peace for my daughter and me for a while longer at least. It wasn't a loan request or job application that was denied. It was the answer that the Louisiana Department of Corrections Parole Board gave my ex-husband. He was arrested March 31, 2005, convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 10 years supposedly without parole. Despite that, he became eligible for parole and had a hearing on October 11, 2012.

A little back-story: At the time of our divorce, my ex-husband was a deputy sheriff in the state of Louisiana. He was involved with the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program at the local elementary school. He was our daughter's hero and best buddy to all the kids in the neighborhood. He was a fun guy that everybody loved. We just had some differences that made remaining his wife an impossibility. 

Maybe I should back up a bit more. I had met and married J for the first time when I was 18 yrs old and had just joined the Air Force. He was very popular with all the ladies and I thought I had scored a "great catch". He left the Air Force in tech school, an option given him when he could not meet the requirements for the guaranteed job field he had signed up to do. One and a half years later he was still unemployed, hanging out with low-life's and had even gotten arrested twice for stupidity. Actually it was shop-lifting while drunk and carrying a concealed weapon (a Chinese throwing star in his back pocket) while jogging in North Las Vegas late at night. I know, an amazing catch he was! So I surrendered, sent him home to Louisiana and filed for divorce. Fast forward through several years, another marriage plus a daughter and separation from the military. Times were tough and I went home to Mississippi. J and I reconnected, he appeared to have grown up and become a responsible guy, he had acquired traits that were lacking the first time around. We remarried and had a little girl of our own and things went well for a few years. Eventually though I realized I was repeating an old mistake and left again. I relocated first to Arizona and then back to Vegas and life moved on. 

Our little girl missed her dad terribly. She doesn't remember that now. Maybe it is just from the number of years, she was only 5 when we left, or it could be she doesn't want to remember. I always had to call him and he would tell her he missed her and promise to call the next week or to send something if her birthday or a holiday were near. The calls and gifts never came. It broke my heart to see her so sad. She eventually stopped asking to call or checking the mailbox for letters from him.

A few years later, I had been in and out of a rocky relationship and was in a really tough place financially. My oldest daughter had remained in Arizona so it was just the youngest and me. She was 9 then and there had been more contact with her father as he was engaged to a woman with kids and I guess he was realizing what he had let go. Again, she doesn't remember but we talked about her going there to stay for a while. She did go and summer came and went and she was having a great time being back in the south and having freedom to do things Las Vegas just doesn't offer a child. Even though his engagement had ended and she didn't have "sisters" in the home anymore, she was surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, friends... not stuck in an apartment with just me or a baby-sitter if I was working. She sounded so happy and alive there that I let her stay. Typing those words still haunts me. The if onlys haven't left to this day, neither have the feelings of guilt. 

She came back to spend the summer with me in Las Vegas just before her 13th birthday. The day before she was to go back to Louisiana a co-worker of mine asked if she was ready to go "home". She began crying and said she wanted to stay with me. When we got home we discussed it thoroughly and she was adamant she wanted to stay. I called him and delicately broached the subject. Where I was expecting an argument I got sudden quiet that I mistook for being upset by the news. There was a hesitation, as if waiting for me to say something else and when I didn't, he agreed that she was at an age where she needed her mom. He said he would start sending her things the next day. And so I got my baby back with me, it was July and she was a teen now. 

It wasn't until February the next year that I learned that there was a more compelling reason for her to want to be with me than just missing her mom. She had been carrying around a diary for ages and kept it very private, it was never out of her sight it seemed. A friend was visiting (or friends, I'm still having trouble remembering who all was there) and M was being a little touchy and out of sorts. At one point she angrily tossed her diary down and went to her room. After a bit I opened the book and started flipping through the pages because it just felt like she was intentionally wanting me to read it. Suddenly everything stopped and I couldn't breathe. Between the time I had last visited her in Louisiana and until a few months before she came out to Vegas, he had been touching her, showing her porn and had eventually raped her. She had never spoken a word of this to me or anyone else. The few times we had spoken on the phone where she seemed off or distracted, I just put down to her being 12 and the changes in school and life that come at that time. I never imagined that someone I had once loved, someone who claimed to love our child, could have possibly done something so heinous! But I never doubted that he had, never questioned whether this was a ploy for attention. The raw pain and bitterness in her words in that book were far too real. The relief in her eyes when we finally talked about it was far too palpable. Had there not been 1500 miles separating us that day, it is  likely that I would be the one now waiting on a parole board hearing! 

M is a gorgeous, intelligent and mature young woman of 21 now. It has been a very long and hard fought battle for her to come to peace within herself but she has. It's tenuous still at times, like when we were notified of the parole hearing, but she maintains. She has a wonderful outlook on life. She works hard and loves hard. She hasn't let the past color her future. I admire that and am very proud of the woman she has become.