One woman’s description of navigating family court
One woman’s poetic description of navigating the horrors of Family Court.
Drown
The diver went deep
To retrieve the body of a diver who died before him.
Decompression tank, oxygen tanks,
Flippers, mask,
Rope, body bag.
The Bends can kill you.
Bubbles in your bloodstream if you come up too quickly.
Bubbles of death.
The diver practiced bagging a body in his living room.
He practiced in a swimming pool.
30 meters down to negative buoyancy.
Then the water sucks you in.
Into the pitch black gravity of the abyss.
Dragging you down fast.
250 meters in 17 minutes
For every minute at the bottom, it takes an hour to get up.
17 minutes in but 12 hours up.
Holding a rope, fighting the pressure.
Lung fatigue sucking on a tank.
Help far away at the surface.
The diver went down into darkness
Falling alongside the rope.
Searching for the body.
Pitch black, time ticking, focus.
Beam of headlamp glimpses it.
Touches it.
Soft decaying flesh in wetsuit, not skeleton.
Surprise!
Memory.
This used to be alive
Now death spinning in pitch blackness.
The body bag is pulled out.
Rope cobras floating in a eerie
Danse Macabre
The body alien in the light.
Hands begin shaking
This isn’t the swimming pool.
Ropes catch on the bright headlamp
Ropes everywhere.
Another minute in, another hour to get out.
Unsheathing scissors to cut cords, escape.
Fingers stop working.
Can’t get away, can’t cut the rope.
Adrenaline surge, fear.
Hyperventilating underwater.
Choking.
Convulsing…the diver drowns.
There are people on shore,
They have rescue supplies.
But the diver was down too deep.
His light stopped.
1 body turned to 2.
I am underwater.
I am told I must dive.
It took 2 hours to get married, but 10 years to get out.
A dead body lies in the deep.
“You can’t protect your children if you don’t write an affidavit”.
I talk in the safe water with friends.
I prepare my office space.
Computer, emails, texts,
Pen, paper, dates,
Blankets, chocolate for recovery.
In minutes I am sucked down deep.
Into the darkness, words thick as poison.
Pressure like a vice on my chest.
Gretel following breadcrumbs, I read old emails.
Gretel with a noose around her neck.
Breathe slowly or you will drown.
I see the decaying flesh…I touch it.
I feel the softness of what I was.
His gangrene and rot pervasive, incarnate.
Held in a Machiavellian suit.
The courtroom waits for me.
I must swim the body up to the surface for everyone to see.
But the body suddenly spins,
He is tangling the ropes,
Looping them over my head, around my headlamp.
Judges peer in from the surface.
It takes 2, right?
Lights moving in the deep.
If there’s a body, just bring it up.
I struggle with all his knots, fear, breathing faster.
Can’t they see what he’s like?
See the distress of the mother whale while the bull drowns the baby?
Bumping it just below the surface so it can’t come up for air.
“Playing” with the child. It’s just “playing”.
It’s just…”a parenting style difference”.
My hands shake.
Not just my hands, but my whole body. I’ve been too long at this depth.
The ropes are everywhere, I need to cut them.
But I need to protect the kids.
“If you run they’ll charge you with kidnapping”, whispers the lawyer.
I press my hands to my thighs to hold still,
But my soul tries to crack open my heart and fly free.
Free from my rib-cage.
I talk gently and softly to myself, but I can’t hear it.
His parents are there smiling.
His parents pay his bills.
Protecting him, saying “God only gives us what we can handle”.
The CO2 builds.
Stay calm, don’t rise quickly, the bends will kill you.
Friends wait in the water above.
They cannot help me in the deep.
I must focus on my breathing.
“It’s important children learn to swim”, says the judge. It’s in their “best interests”.
But not these waters.
Not down there.
You don’t know what he is like when you’re not looking.
I beg, please judge, let my Children swim to shore.
Don’t let 1 body become 2 more.
