Six years ago today

Six years have passed since it all began, since my first day before the Family Court. I have been feeling heavy all week and last night I finally cried. The tears felt thick and all too salty as though time had turned them into concentrate.

Six years ago today, she sat on her throne, a magistrate who knew nothing about me or my family. It took her six minutes to make an order she said was interim. I was present in the room that day but may as well not have been. The matter was heard ‘ex parte,’ so I was made to sit in the back of crowded courtroom, an invisible man watching my fate crumble before me. The order was made and file was sealed, robbing me of my right of reply and robbing the court of the simple truth.

After those six minutes, I never saw my children again.

Years later, by the time the court accepted my version as true; by the time it found the other side had lied and misled us all, by the time the court found there was no risk but only benefit for my children and I to share a life together — by this time, they now say, it is all too late.

Six minutes have turned into six years and there is still no light in the end of the tunnel.

Time has been no friend of mine, and yet it is time I miss most. I miss the times we had, those special occasions and the ordinary moments of happy family life. I also painfully miss the time that we did not share and those milestones I missed out on. I worry about the future and am uncertain as to whether we will ever share such moments together again. There is bitter irony in that I stand here grieving for my greatest enemy: the tick-tock of the clock.

I lost half my children’s childhood — but the saddest thing of all is that they lost all of theirs.