Torn apart

The details of our divorce could be written about for ever. Lets just put it this way. We beat eachother up pretty badly. No punch was pulled. No resource was left untapped, and unfortunately no close friend was left unscathed. We put our families through a living hell. Our closest friends Jimmy and Tanya had to pick between us. Jimmy testified for me, Tanya for Maria. Now nearly 7 years later I feel very ashamed for what we put them through. We had known Jimmy and Tanya since we were in high school. I was the best man in their wedding and Jimmy was the best man in mine. While our lives took us to different cities and states we often met for dinners and vacations. They were our most trusted friends. I never had brothers and sisters , so my realtionship with Jimmy and Tanya was very sibling oriented. When they found out about us splitting up they were very upset and like most, hoped we'd get back together. As the months wore on it bacame more and more painfully obvious that it just wasn't going to happen. In the end Tanya identified a little more with Maria and Jimmy a little more with me. Our families were a different story. Marias family was and still is very supportive of me as a person. They were obviously there for Maria, but they could tell the pain I was going through as well. They sympathized. Before I explain my family maybe I need a little background. I was adopted when I was 2 years old from an orphanage in Colombia South America. My adoptive parents were scholars. Both college graduates. My father got his Phd from Cornell. While traveling in Colombia they happened upon an orphanage. I was the 3 crib on the left. I sat up and said "papa". They knew right away they wanted to adpot me. Back than adoption wasn't the big business it is now. There was no internet and no real set rules about bringing a child back froma third world country. Through translators and bribes they were able to adopt me legally in Colombia. The difficulty remained in bringing me back to the United States. They obtained a 1 day visitors visa for me and waited until they had one day left on their visa to travel back to the US. At customs they were informed about problems with what they had done. Certain they would have to give back the child, my parents waited for a local INS agent to show up at their house. As luck or fate would have it, The INS agent was an old college friend of my fathers. Papers were signed, red tape was cut, and my parents were told to have me naturalized by the time I was 4. I was always raised knowing I was adopted. There was no way to hide it. My parents were well......white. I was obviously ethnic. At a young age I was told "we chose you". I realize now that my adoptive parents hoped to raise a young scholar. It made sense. They saved a young baby from what was a certain life of dispair and gave that child love and opportunity. I would be molded. For the most part I thought I had a very normal upbringing. Both parents worked and I was sent to private schools so I could get the best education. The differences in our personalities was evident at a young age. Maria was the first girl I ever brought home. From the beginning my parents fell in love with her. She was smart, driven, and wanted a better life for herself. She was everthing I wasn't. Maria would have flourished in my home. She would have loved the individual attention and private eduacation I had recieved, and it was made clear to me that she would have done so much more with it than I had. It came as no surprise that my parents took Marias side in the divorce. She was the daughter the never had. Or as my mother testified on the stand "the child they should have had." During our divorce my parents testified that Tommy was better off with no father in his life than having me as his father. I was a danger to his life. They both testified that I had always been a "bad seed". I was an embarassment to them. They knew when I was a baby that they had made a mistake. I had a disassociative disorder. I was possibly even a sociopath. All this according to my adoptive parents who as I stated earlier "chose me." When the judge in our court hearing went back to her chambers to make her decision I stood up and begged. "please don't take my little boy away. Please don't let him grow up without a daddy." I was so scared. I waited. what I didn't know was that our judge was adopted and she had 2 adopted children. what came next was nothing short of a miracle. Joint custody. Joint conservatorship. Maria couldn't move and my adoptive parents had a restriciton put on their acess to my son. They were not allowed to be alone with him. Ever. Tommy was comming home. I was elated. I was scared. I was still very torn apart and raw from the divorce. The healing process , I would learn, would take sometime. With that came a bit of discovery and realization about how I was raised and how I was treated growing up. It would become a gamechanger so to speak. My life , soul, and spirit would never be the same.