129 days after the due date, the forensic report that was supposed to vindicate me was ready to be picked up at the court. 129 extra days without my daughter. By this point I was barely seeing her. A supervised visit was ridiculously expensive and since my husband refused to pay for any of it I was stuck with the bill. I reduced my visits to twice a week, and sometimes even canceled one of those in order to save money.

I woke up on March 11, 2019 with an extreme amount of anxiety. This was my judgement day. This report was going to determine my fate. I was scheduled to go to my lawyer’s office later that afternoon, read the 44 page document, and discuss it with him. Why was I so nervous? I’m clearly not a child abuser and the chances of him making a mistake and assuming that I am were very, very low.

I now know why I was so nervous. The impossible had already happened – the court took my daughter away on a false claim. The forensic took 4 extra months past the due date the write my report. Nobody held my husband accountable for his financial responsibilities and I had to pay for 100% of the forensic and supervision. At this point I was ready for the next impossibly horrible thing to go wrong.

I walked into my lawyer’s office early on Monday afternoon with my legs shaking. My heart was beating fast and I couldn’t drink enough water to quench my thirst. I was relieved to hear that my lawyer was ok with sitting with me while I read this thing so that I didn’t have to sit in an empty conference room by myself.

Unfortunately I cannot share what the report said, but it’s safe to say that it did not conclude that I was a child abuser. Tragically, it also did not say that my husband made the whole thing up in order to hurt me. It was just kind of neutral. His conclusion was that both of us were fit parents.

I was devastated. I had been waiting 8 months for this report to end this thing, and it had done nothing except state the obvious – that I’m not a child abused. Why had he not noticed that my husband did this vindictively? Why was it not an issue that a parent would take a child away from her mother out of rage and jealousy? Did he just not care??

I sat in my lawyers office for about 3 more hours that day. The whole time was spent with him trying to calm me and reassure me that this report would get supervision lifted. But I didn’t care. I was still not vindicated of the insane bullshit that my husband accused me of. No one bothered to address the fact that he had written in a court document that I was using my daughter as a sex doll. No one cared that I was barely seeing my child and she was suffering. It was a joke.

At this point I had no choice but to trust my lawyer, which I did. He was always honest with me. Over and over again he told me that he was happy with the report and it was going to get me my child back. In order to keep surviving I had to embrace that.

I walked out of his office and walked and walked. I met my girlfriend on the way and we walked almost the whole length of Central Park. It was a nice day and the fresh air gave me hope that one day my world would no longer be such a dark place. I had no choice but to keep moving forward.

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