The System Is Broken

When I was 15 I fell in love with a total douche bag. (As "in love" as a 15 year old can be.) The fact that he was a total douche bag was part of the appeal back then. I came from an upper middle-class family. We lived in a 5 bedroom house. We even had a library room. Both of my parents have double Master's degrees. I was taught by my snobby mother when I was growing up that no college education meant the person was trash. If we ever went to McDonald's, she would say loudly, "This is where you'll have to work if you don't go to college." Thanks to extensive orthodontia, both my sister and I had gleaming, straight pearly whites.

The appeal of the douche bag was that he was everything I was taught was wrong. His parents were divorced. He'd lived his whole life in a single wide trailer. He had visible cavities. He turned the music up way too loud in his beater car, and by age 17, his driver's license was revoked. (For the first time.) He had been in trouble with the law for petty crimes all through his teenage years. He once threw some object or other out of a moving vehicle and cracked the windshield of his friend who was driving behind him. He had thrown a snowball so hard that it went through a glass window and hit the intended target, another teenage girl. To this day she bears the scars on her face. I ran into her when I was 32. She remembered me. She knew I was the girl who got pregnant at 17 and married the douche bag. But this isn't our story. It's my son's.

Mr. Douche Bag had been abusive to me in every way a person can be for our 8 years of wedded bliss. We separated when my daughter was 7 and my son was 2. At that point I became super motivated. I raised those kids myself until my daughter was 14 and my son was about to turn 10. All of a sudden he wanted to play daddy. He began exercising his minimum visitation.

He's always been emotionally abusive to our son, but in the last couple of years it's gotten physical. I'm not there to stop him. Our most recent go-round with DCFS ended with the caseworker telling me that she wholeheartedly believes douche bag is hitting Kobi, but until there's physical evidence, nothing can be done. Why my son and not my daughter? It's simple—our son looks like him. And he hates himself.

Physical evidence? Like what? A broken bone? My son's lifeless body?? Exactly what constitutes enough "evidence" for us to get help? My attempts to obtain a protective order have proven futile. Again, no "physical evidence."

Over the Christmas break, my son went to spend time with douche bag and his newest conquest, Mrs. Douche Bag. She also treats my son like shit. At some point she mentioned to douche bag that she could hide her drugs in a salt shaker to take back home over the Utah/Colorado line. My son told me about it when he got home from visiting. He was upset and asked me what she meant. At 12 years old, his knowledge of the drug world is minimal, at best.

There's no physical evidence. I'd call the cops, but they won't help. I'd call DCFS again, but apparently Utah is the Twilight Zone. I am beside myself that I can not protect my child. So I messaged Douche Bag and asked him to please keep his and his wife's drug life far away from my children.

My son went to his paternal grandmother's home two days ago for a sleep over with his dad. His dad punished him for telling me about putting drugs in the salt shaker, telling my son that it was a joke. My son was grounded to "his room" over there and not allowed to play. Oh yeah, joking about putting drugs in salt shakers is TOTALLY normal. Everybody does that!

Jesus. I guess we'll just wait for physical evidence and pray that it's not too bad when it happens. People say, "if I was in your situation, I'd kill (douche bag)." Well, I'm no use to my son in a jail cell so as wonderful as that sounds, it's not reality. I would love 10 minutes with douche bag and a Louisville slugger, but that's not reality.

The system is broken, folks. And my son is proof.