Blended: Track Meet Showdown
This is probably one of the harder stories to tell for a few reasons. All of these stories have been challenging to tell actually. I’ve kept them to myself for 10 years waiting for the perfect opportunity to present itself. Although I toyed with the idea for years the timing never felt quite right. Having this platform that God has so graciously provided has helped me come to terms that it was finally time. So sit tight while I tell you this next part. Yes, I exercised much self-control and forethought in this situation by not putting a hand on this woman although this is probably the one instance where no one truly would’ve blamed me. But I’m still extremely pissed to this day about how badly this scene affected my daughter’s mental and emotional state. Worse I was powerless to stop it. If she wanted to damage her son mentally and emotionally that was her prerogative. I could try to prevent as much as I could but at the end of the day it was HER responsibility. However, when it came to my daughter that was mine.
I know parents who still to this day tell me they will never forget what they witnessed in the story I’m about to tell you. I honestly will never forget it myself. It would be the first time I truly realized my husband was not exaggerating about this woman’s mental state. Based on my own experiences with her up to this point I noticed certain things myself. But as a woman I wrote a lot of her behavior off as typical female craziness. We’re all a little crazy if you want honesty. Especially when love and feelings are involved. However, with her it was definitely different. She showed herself to be very emotionally unstable, a walking contradiction and extremely hypocritical. She could go around bashing my husband and I but should we say a word in defense of ourselves how dare we?! She could tell a story and no matter how many holes it contained, lies she told, or details she left out she was categorized as “speaking her truth” and telling her story to “bless someone”… (Ma’am how are you blessing someone with a lie?) Yet should we speak out against her in any capacity or even in the same way she’d chosen it was considered to be petty and a personal attack.
In her opinion, it seemed it was okay FOR HER to speak out about her experiences publicly (no matter how inaccurate, void or “assumed”) but no one else was allowed the same regard. If we decided to apply her logic across the board wouldn’t what she was doing and saying about us also be considered a personal attack? Okay… A prime example of her contradictory behavior and hypocrisy at its best. She never looked at her own actions the same. She was exempt I guess. If I had known what I know about her now I would’ve chosen to handle her very differently. More on that later but just know in a strange way she had her reasons for acting out the way that she did. I’m not saying I agreed with her tactics. I hated them actually. But what I CAN say is I honestly think looking back now I understood her. The poor woman was so very broken.
I know I say I remember everything but there are certain aspects to this story that is still a blur. Not many but some. While some things stand out clear as day other things I can’t remember how they got from one point to the next. Let me explain… It would be exactly a week later I see things could actually get worse. By this time his son was 8 and while we still had him in travel basketball, we put it on the back burner for him to start track. He was simultaneously doing both when we could manage but at the start of the official track season, it took a back seat. My husband’s shift at work had changed so that he now went in on Saturday’s. Most times he went in late so he wouldn’t miss anything but on this particular Saturday, he didn’t have that option. As a result, I would take his son to his track meet and stay until my work shift started at 1 PM. Arrangements had also been made for him to spend a few nights at his friend’s house (whose parents were also friends of ours at the time) so I wouldn’t even be exchanging him with her. This seemed like it should be a piece of cake. I’d get there around 10:30, watch him run his first 2 races and leave around 12:30 to make it for my shift at work. This should have been the easiest 2 hours ever! Not so much. Let me LITERALLY paint a picture for you. These are the actual bleachers in which this ordeal went down.
When I arrived at the meet I had my daughter with me who is also his age. We came in and sat in the bleachers with some parent friends of mine including the mom of the friend he was going home with. I’m the purple face, the mom of the friend is the green face and my daughter is the baby pink face. This is the setup. I said my hellos and settled in for what was supposed to be an easy 2 hours. I’d left his overnight bags in my car and figured I would have the mom, my friend, walk with me to get them before I left so we wouldn’t have to keep up with them. After being seated for about 10 minutes his son came over and asked me…
Son: “Do you have my bags?” I thought he was asking me because he forgot what I’d said and didn’t want me to forget them.
Me: “Yea sweetie, remember we’re holding them in the car until I leave?”
Son: “Oh yea.” He shook his head ok and off he went.
I started telling the mom friend the story about the craziness with his mom and her husband showing up uninvited to our home.
3 minutes later….
He comes back.
Son: “My mom wants me to get my bags from you.”
Me: “Ok, tell her I’ll get them when I leave in a little bit.”
Son: “Ok.” And off he went.
2 minutes later…
She approaches me with her mom (who I didn’t even know was there) and stands right in front of me. Her mom speaks.
Ex-Wife’s Mom: “Can you get [son’s name] bags. I need to put something in there.”
Me: Thinking about her husband on our doorstep just a week ago and everything that happened after. Yeeeeeea there was no way in hell I was walking into an empty parking lot with the 2 of them alone. I only knew a few things about his ex-wife’s mom. One thing being his ex-wife had actually tried to fight her own mother some years prior. So I didn’t really have the confidence in her mother to contain the situation. My main concern was that we’d get to the parking lot, words would be exchanged and some things might go down where there were no witnesses. I didn’t want to be put in a situation where she might lie and say I tried to attack her to get me banned from activities again. At this point, I didn’t put anything past her.
Also Me: “Umm yea sure but I’ll get them when I leave in a bit.
Ex-Wife: “You know what, you are so disrespectful! You have no respect for anybody-”
Me: “Excuse me? I JUST said I would get them when I leave and he’s not even leaving with you anyway. Why do you need his bags right now so badly?”
Ex-Wife: “I don’t have to tell you anything-” actually she was kind of right but I started to tune out the rest of what she was saying anyway because at that point I realized this had nothing to do with the bag. It was a power struggle and she was trying to bully me. Although she seemed oblivious because she was so consumed in emotion at the moment, I also realized an entire track meet was happening and many parents were sitting around me looking at this situation escalate. It was the car keying incident all over again. Did this woman have any sense? Did she not have any control over her emotions? Wrong question. We knew she didn’t. I wasn’t about to let her embarrass their son like that so I looked up at her and said…
Me: “I’m not doing this with you.”
And with that, I got up to move out of the bleachers taking my daughter by the hand with me. I figured the least I could do was move the antics away from the crowd. Her mom then moved in front of her as I passed to make sure (I think) she didn’t try anything. As I started walking away from the bleachers hand in hand with my daughter, she walked around them to the other side (bypassing her mom’s initial block) to run right at me yelling. This is where things get fuzzy because at this point I don’t remember much of what she said. Something along the lines of me being disrespectful still and trying to be her son’s mother I think. What she was saying wasn’t important. Everything was moving in slow motion and eerily silent as I tried to figure out my next best move. She looked like she was trying to jump at me to fight so I was now distracted by the thought that I needed to protect my daughter. Would she really try to fight me here and now in front of her? Was this woman about to inadvertently hurt my daughter all because she couldn’t control herself?; In front of this entire track meet full of people just here to enjoy their kids?; In front of ALL THE KIDS including her son?!? I just stood there. I could not believe what I was witnessing.
This woman was falling apart. I was literally watching her loose her mind, all good sense and any control she had. This was the “crazy” my husband had been speaking of and here I was witnessing it firsthand. See? THIS is why I initially refused to go into the parking lot with them to get the bag. I had a gut feeling something like this would happen except in the parking lot there would’ve been no witnesses to see this woman loose her mind. She could’ve told any story and no one would’ve been there to confirm or deny it either way. Her mom could barely contain her and she looked like she had been waiting for a moment like this. These were the thoughts running through my mind as I stood there almost frozen. She continued to yell as her mom stepped in front of her AGAIN to put an arm out and block her from approaching me. She pushed against her mom’s arm which had a cup of water in it that sloshed over and spilled. Her mom was still trying to stop her.
The movement of her pushing against her mom cause my daughter who was standing right next to me to panic and she started screaming (like literally) and crying hysterically out of fear. My daughter was terrified. That’s when I got pissed. It was in that moment I wanted to knock the literal demonic hell out of this woman because that’s what she was. Clearly possessed. How dare she scare my child like that?! But just as quickly as I had the thought I realized fighting this woman in front of my daughter would only do more damage. I wouldn’t stoop to her level of ignorance. As soon as my daughter started panicking, one of the other moms who was also a friend of mine swooped in so fast. She came over, took my daughter by the hand, escorted her away while offering to buy her snow cones, candy, treats, snacks and anything else from the snack bar to distract her and calm her down. I was so grateful to her at that moment. The other mom who was the mom of the friend he was going to be going home with was also standing next to me and said…
Mom of Son’s Friend: “C’mon. I’ll go with you to get the bag out of your car.” She too saw how wildly the situation had escalated and was trying to calm it as well. She put her arm through mine and pulled me towards the parking lot.
Meanwhile his ex-wife’s mother was telling her: “[Nickname] Stop it! C’mon stop it!” While trying to contain her.
She followed me to the parking lot screaming.
Ex-Wife: “You homewrecker! You stole my husband and ruined my family you homewrecker!”
I was so done at this point. I swung my entire body around and screamed: “Maybe if you kept your legs closed to other men you’d still have your husband! That’s why he left you, you cheating whore! I’m the homewrecker? YOU destroyed your marriage and family. NOT ME!!”
… and my friend was desperately trying to pull me away to diffuse the situation.
I would have been completely ok with my behavior up to this point because I had stayed calm and hadn’t yelled at her or called her out of her name like she’d done to me. My poor choices came into play the moment I decided to yell back. I should’ve never said what I said to that woman. Yes. She was extremely out of line. But I became wrong the second I decided to respond to her in the way she’d been responding to me. She was a broken, hurt woman and here I was trying to hurt her even more because of what she’d said and done not only to me, but my daughter as well. On a human level I know a lot of people would understand my reaction. But I was still wrong. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and said nothing.
Mom of Son’s Friend: “C’mon, let go.” She ushered me away as his ex-wife screamed out more “Homewrecker!” comments. I walked over to my car, got the bag out of my trunk and handed it to my friend. She walked it over, gave it to the mom and came back to check on me. Another mom who we were also acquaintances with came over too.
Acquaintance Mom (Also wife of head track coach): “What happened? Why didn’t you just give her the bag? What’s going on?”
I then had to explain to her what happened and the events of the weekend prior with her husband showing up to our home uninvited. They both stayed a few minutes longer to make sure I was ok and then left. I was pretty much done at this point and ready to leave but my daughter was still inside the meet at the snack bar. I knew I had to go get her but I called my husband first. This was his worst-case scenario and he wasn’t going to like it. I explained to him everything that happened and sure enough he wasn’t happy. He said he would address the situation with her and talk to me more about it later. We hung up.
Her husband would show up after and right in time to miss everything. I wonder what he would have thought of the situation had he seen her unfiltered reaction and heard the homewrecker comments himself. The better question is would she have even made the comments at all or acted out that way knowing he was her audience? It was weird to me that although she was now married she was still calling me a homewrecker, accusing me of stealing her husband and her family. In my opinion, and in the opinion of those who were watching, everything she’d said in the heat of the moment made it very obvious she wasn’t over her ex-husband but HER husband would arrive to miss all of it. Actually, I wonder what he was doing while she was at the track meet…..? (More on that later)
I walked back in to collect my daughter. When I got to her she told me that his ex-wife had approached her and tried to apologize to her but she was scared of her now. She asked me to make sure she never tried to talk to her again. It wasn’t like she’d ever interacted with her at all from the beginning. But from that point forward and to this very day my daughter would now look at her and fear her. This will be relevant later but moving forward she would never engage in any type of conversation with her alone, be near or around her willingly and generally avoid her like the plague. She was traumatized and still talks about that situation today. While my daughter would be affected for life, her son thankfully wouldn’t really see much of anything and has only ever heard versions of the story.
When I got to work later that day I would go into the back break room and completely break down. I was so disappointed in myself for saying what I said to her and honestly, I felt bad. That wasn’t my character at all. I had allowed her behavior to turn me into something I wasn’t. I was also angry and frustrated more than anything else. That she’d done all of that to and in front of my daughter was what upset me most. Though I knew fighting her was not the answer, at that moment I was pissed I didn’t. Every emotion I felt was in direct contradiction of the next and I didn’t know what to do. What kind of woman, what kind of mom, what kind of CHRISTIAN behaved this way?! I just couldn’t make any of it make sense. I couldn’t believe I was a month away from marrying into this and for a split second I questioned everything. What was I going to do? Things just couldn’t go on like this…
I had everything I needed to file a restraining order against her and her husband for that matter. Trust me I really thought about it. With her history, it wouldn’t be hard. But I knew if I did I could possibly get myself inadvertently LEGALLY removed from all activities which would make building our life together even more difficult. Although the restraining order would keep them away from me, I knew it was a possibility it would favor her when it came to activities since they were her son’s events. I wouldn’t be married to his father for another month so as a fiancé they could technically just say I shouldn’t show up. Needless to say, I wasn’t willing to risk it. It would be exactly what she wanted. My husband would address the situation with her however in how he would recount the conversation to me I could still tell he took the diplomatic route. So frustrating. His reasons of course always being he didn’t want her to pull their son out of sports. I’m sure you can see where this is going. This is the leverage she would continue to hold and use but not for long. Our wedding was still coming so really this was just the beginning of it all. It would be HER husband’s actions though that made her question EVERYTHING and well… Karma is that you? Funny how you never really understand the damage you’ve done to someone else until it’s done to you.