Paranoia setting in
Okay gang.. I don't expect any answers I just need to get out whats bugging me.
As you may know I left my ex last September and moved 2000 miles away with our kids. Due to the distance they haven't seen their Dad since we left, but in our agreement he gets them for 6 weeks every summer. The oldest 2, my daughter 13 and son 10 will be leaving on the 30th of June to go see him. At the time of our separation he had been in AA for about 4 months and vowed he was a changed man.. yeah, sure. Once I was out the door so was AA, but I expected that as he was already drinking behind my back.
I've had several conversations with a girlfriend back in Alberta, her 2 kids are my kids best friends and she's told me his drinking is just as out of control as before. In fact my ex is bringing her kids on the 2 1/2 hr trip to the airport to pick up my son and daughter, nice sentiment, but I think in truth he's petrified of being alone with his kids.
A little background, his job in the oil industry kept him away from us practically for the entire lives of our children. By his choice, he was always available to stay and work for his week off, therefore stretching his 2 weeks away to 5, 7, 10 and yes at one point he was gone for 13 weeks. He claimed it was for the money, to give us a better life, but even with the incredible amounts of $4000 - $6000 every two weeks we always seemed to live paycheck to paycheck??? Duh! you think I would have figured it out sooner, yeah I covered the bills, kept food in the house, clothed the kids, but I was very frugal and couldn't believe the sums of money he supposedly had to spend for hotels, food and gas. Coincidently this pattern of being away longer and longer occured when the kids were very young and instead of coming home from work after his 2 weeks, went on a 2 day drunk, no calls to let me know where he was, showed up at supper time on the 2nd day and in his oh so charming way tried raping me infront of the kids.
Ok, so now you know what I mean about him being petrified of his kids, he really doesn't know how to relate to them, even in the short times he was home intermittantly thru their lives he didn't have much to do with them. He was home for sex, meals and large bouts of sleep infront of the TV, if the kids were noisey or interupted him, quite often they were yelled at and told to leave him alone.
Flash forward to him starting his AA program last spring, not his idea, our marriage counselor in one of our sessions in the 3 years before I left for good had asked him if, since he vowed he didn't have a drinking problem, he could go for 12 months without a drink. He laughed, why would I do that, I don't have a problem. So she responded, if you don't have a problem why can't you go without for a year? So then she asked if he could go without for 6 months. He hesitated then reluctantly agreed to 6 months, she told him should he find that it wasn't as easy as he thought he could find support thru an AA group and gave him the info for our area. He thought it was halarious on the way home, but it wasn't long before he was attending AA meetings and not long before he was 13 stepping either(he LOVES women, especially needy women). Making this into a book, aren't I?
Anyway, he's been back to his regular ways for the past 8 months. He's just rented a house with the buddy he's been sharing an apartment with because he can't have kids at the apartment. Ironically the buddy he lives with is the same buddy who managed to get him to AA, neither one of them go anymore and both started drinking again at roughly the same time.
My ex is a binge drinker, never got into any trouble with the law over it, no record, so inspite of the temptation to deny him access I have no legal ground to do so. So what I'm worried about is that once he's had the kids there long enough for the novelty to wear off, for both him and the kids, and he realizes that raising them day in and day out on his own isn't as easy as he always told me I had it that he'll go on a binge. I know my girlfriend will keep an eye on them for me, which eases my mind a little and should anything happen she'll take them straight to her house. So I guess my real worry is what will it do to the kids because they really never saw any of it. Sure he sat them down and told them all about AA when he started going and apologized to them for being the way he was, but I'm sure that confused them too, his drinking was never done around them anyway. I know I'm probably jumping the gun, that maybe it won't happen at all, but with two alcoholics in one house I think it doubles the possibility.
So should I have a talk with the kids before they go? and if I do, how do I go about starting a conversation like that? I don't want them feeling like they have to walk on eggshells around their dad, because they shouldn't. But in case it happens that he goes on a binge during the 6 weeks I don't want them blind sided either. I'm just lost on this one, I know I should "Let go and let God", but they're my kids, I worry about them.
Thanks for letting me ramble on, I just needed to vent a little and maybe write down all the things spinning in my head so I can read it back and put it in perspective.