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Martha rules!
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I found a new neighborhood, a new apartment, a new school. More therapy. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I hardly left the house -- borderline agoraphobia induced by fear. Anti-depressants only fed my insomnia.

Transferring to a new school -- mid-kindergarten, no less -- wrecked my plan to keep Henry in one place, give him stability. The new principal recoiled when presented with the restraining order. I didn't need this additional guilt, having already spent countless hours wondering what if. What if he kidnaps my son? His words echoed, "How would you like it if someone killed Henry?"

I worried the other parents would shy away, their children reject my child. Not because we were new, but because with us came the black cloud. Would my son's presence among their children mean that one day we would all be on the evening news, weeping, hysterical, because this man decided to gun down a dozen children to "get even"?

I reconvened with the principal to stress safety. No mercy. She recalled a long-past incident. An ex-stepdad came to steal his ex's child. A teacher stepped in, was injured, the child taken. "Now," she said, "if someone comes for your child, we do not intervene; we let them go." I could tell she wanted me gone.

Her tactic worked, my fear intensified. I fled the state, uprooting my child yet again. He bawled. We'll be fine, I said. Inside, I was sick.

The first day in our new school, I caught a glimpse of myself in the office window. I was beaten down, defeated. Meekly, I approached the administrators with the restraining order. Expecting hostility, I was instead surprised by consolation and support.

That was a turning point. Their kindness nudged me toward healing. I would never be the same again. I had been in a horrible wreck. Even with years of work I will always walk with an emotional limp. But I started to realize: One person shattering your trust is no reason to distrust all. The universe sends reinforcing lessons. One day a stranger approached. I tensed. "It's raining," he said; "Would you like to share my umbrella?"

We signed up for martial arts classes. We learned about focus, self-confidence, control. We learned how to pay attention.

Pay attention. To the outside. To the inside. What do I most fear now -- nearly three years later? The kidnapping and school-massacre scenarios still visit occasionally -- when we begin a new grade, or an extracurricular program.

At my worst, I contemplate other terrible scenarios. The perpetrator on his haunches, waiting for me to blink. Maybe he will let me have Henry for five, 10 years more. Maybe then he'll pounce.

I want to hide how much I love my son, not voice these fears, lest they provide a roadmap for destroying me. But he knows already.

There are other inconveniences. I pay for an unlisted phone number. The address on my license is false. My daily drive to a P.O. box is an ongoing reminder that I am the one restrained.

Financially, I have been wiped out. Therapy, anti-depressants, lawyers' fees. I lost the one good job I ever had in the midst of it, and I have never stopped wondering if it was at least in part because my producer -- as she informed me, unhappily -- had received a number of whacked-out letters from my ex. (This too was clearly forbidden by the restraining order.)

I will pay and pay. Henry pays, too -- the biggest burden of all. Unlike his friends, many of whom are already off riding bikes unchaperoned, Henry is kept on a shorter leash.

Some claim I am irrational. Possibly. Nothing is clear. Some days I experiment with exhaling -- maybe I am paranoid? -- only to read in the paper of some man who, enraged by estrangement, hunts down she-who-spurned (and who took out a restraining order), laying her to rest on the asphalt, their dead children sprawled in crimson puddles nearby. How much worry is enough? No, he doesn't have a gun, as far as I know. No, he never hit me. But he was livid.

Some say, "He hasn't come physically near you in years, has he?" They buy into out of sight, out of mind. But I feel his presence. He is out there, watching, fixated. I know. More than a year after I left him, I had lunch with an acquaintance. She revealed the story of a business lunch, with strangers, among them a man who randomly announced -- to the great discomfort of all -- that he was married to me and that I "killed his baby." Sadly, this fixation did not surprise me, only recalled another confession, when he admitted being obsessed for over a dozen years with a college mate who rejected him. Should we have a daughter, he told me then, he wanted to name the child for this woman.

I ran into another friend -- it had been so long since we'd last seen each other, she looked at me as if she'd seen a ghost. "I was so worried about you," she said. She detailed seeing him, watching him guzzle a bottle of vodka, listening to him obsess over me as he violently knocked things over.

One night there was a knock at the door. Another concerned friend. She tells me he has started showing up at a club where I used to give poetry readings. He'd visited it with me once, hated it -- it was a dive; he is a fern-and-brass snob. Now he's there. On poetry nights. A coincidence?

Another year passed. I published a book that detailed, among other things, my relationship with him. A disjointed review appeared at Amazon, with his name, his corporate e-mail address attached. He wrote about how he had let go, moved on. Yes, I expected there would be a response. But this one is creepy, and I receive e-mails from friends and strangers who have seen it, who worry about the content, about how it lapses from "critique" to addressing me by name, as if this is a letter to me. Again, forbidden by the restraining order.

Oddly, good has come from this. I am more aware than ever before that I should celebrate every moment with my son, just in case, just in case. Henry and I are both more than halfway to black belt, succeeding at something I never thought possible. I write about my experience -- despite fear this will exacerbate the situation -- and hear from others like me, grateful for my encouragement. I receive profound love and support from the parents of Henry's peers, who join my circle of friends in helping me not dwell self-destructively on what can neither be changed nor sugar-coated: a lack of foresight that has led to my life, my son's life, being forever altered. They remind me that to sink into guilt and regret will only taint my mothering.

I pay attention. I teeter forward. I pay attention.
salon.com | Oct. 25, 1999

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