**Sorry this is so long**

So my daughter is 7 months old and between maternity leave earlier this year and struggling to find daycare, I’ve had a lot of time off work. As such, I told my bf and my family that I didn’t plan on taking any time off or doing anything special for my birthday. Just a normal little family get together over the weekend.

Well, at that get together, my sister revealed that her gift to me was arranging for me to have my birthday off from work (without my knowledge), so she and my mom and I could all go get mani/pedis, take me out to lunch, and do a little birthday shopping. I was surprised and so happy because I live an hour away from my family and don’t see them as often as I’d like.

So we did that, and at the end of that wonderful day, I have a text from the bf. Just says “Where are you?” I called within five minutes of receiving the text and told him I was on my way home and that I’d had a great day. He says “Oh I see, I don’t matter.” And he hangs up on me.

Now I’ve been emotionally distancing myself from this man for a long time now. He’s an alcoholic, which I didn’t really realize until I was already 3 months pregnant. I had wanted to leave then, but I was afraid of the custody battle. I encouraged him to stop drinking and after some really awful fights, he did, but only for a little while. He missed our baby’s birth (while sober!) and has been very absent as a father. Now that he’s drinking again I was feeling like it was only a matter of time before I needed to go, custody battles be damned.

So after he hangs up on me, he won’t take my calls. I get home and his car isn’t there. I was like fine. Whatever. But I go to the bedroom I share with him to give the baby a bath (all her bath stuff is in there as it’s a bigger tub) and he had locked the bedroom door. And when I went to get my key, it was gone. So this guy locked me out of the bedroom so I can’t get to my clothes, personal belongings, toiletries, or the baby’s bath stuff. I knew I was leaving right then.

Long story short in the morning he still wasn’t back and wanted to act like locking me out was an accident, but he still wouldn’t come let me in until after he finished work. Mmhmmm. He had stayed at a hotel the night before apparently. Because I chose not to celebrate my birthday with him. Wow. This man is about to turn 50 like, grow up.

So at this point, I’ve had it, and used wikihow to teach me how to get in the door using a credit card. My family mobilized, and drove an hour with several vehicles and helped me get my stuff and the baby’s stuff packed and back down the hill all before he came home from work.

I let him know via text I was leaving and why. Knowing his penchant for verbal abuse and controlling behavior, I declined to discuss my decision with him over the phone and asked we keep our conversation in text. That infuriated him and he immediately started threatening “a war” and bringing up my last relationship (over 5 years ago) in which I experienced sexual abuse and then my ex put explicit videos of me online without my knowledge or permission. So now this man, who I poured my heart out to when I was healing from that trauma, is now using it against me and trying to say it makes me an unfit mother. He began threatening to take down my whole family and threatening my work and livelihood. He showed his true colors and I stopped responding because I’m not about rising to the bait and playing those games with him.

I sought the advise of a lawyer who informed me that because we’re not married, he has no rights to our child until he files for them in court. I was under no obligation to let him see her but I also have no rights to child support until the courts establish his paternity. I said that was fine, I don’t need his money, and I’ll let him see her as long as I can supervise the visit because I know he drives drunk all the time, even with his other children in the car, and passes out for hours at a time. My offer to him of supervised visits was not met with rationality and he continued to threaten me and accuse me of abduction of our child and demand I provide him with a visitation schedule. I eventually began to feel afraid—in addition to his violent nature he owns 4 guns, one of them an AR15. Keep in mind he demanded a schedule on Wednesday evening and I said I’d work on it and get it to him ASAP. And then I couldn’t get an appointment with the lawyer until the Friday morning after that. And he just kept texting that he would not wait on my timeline, that he would not be at my mercy, that when I got to it was not soon enough. He couldn’t even wait less than 48 hours. Ridiculous.

Anyway he still doesn’t have a schedule because he’s made me feel so unsafe that what I’m actually working on is a restraining order. He has followed through with his threats to send links of those explicit videos to my workplace, so now he is guilty of revenge porn. He has texted me 230 times in the space of three days and called 95 times in two days. He called the cops on me and my lawyer explained the situation to them and he has since been advised by law enforcement that it’s a civil matter because there are no court orders granting him custody. He admitted in a voicemail that they told him that, but the harassment has not ceased. He calls me names, threatens my reputation, and is clearly trying to create a narrative in which I am a satanist (really?!? Yes he did accuse me of this!) and an unfit mother. He is digging at every emotional scar he knows I have and obviously trying to intimidate me and be hurtful. I’ve responded to none of it.

All I can say is I hope I have enough material to convince the courts that I need a permanent restraining order. If he doesn’t file for parental rights, I won’t either because, despite him accusing me of extortion (in the form of child support), I’d rather have my baby safe from him and his alcoholic influence than have a single cent from him. And btw he makes over $300K a year as a financial advisor. I super don’t care. My baby is all I need and I make enough to get us by.

If he does file for rights and visitation I just hope I can convince the court he needs to be breathalyzed before and after or supervised visits or both. I fear for her safety with him. There is already a standing court order that he is not to drink while he has his other kids (which he has violated consistently) and I have high hopes that the courts will see the pattern.

I just hope some good for my baby comes out of all this stress and anxiety and fear. I want to save her from him. He thought because I was invested in our relationship and I tried hard to make him happy (i.e. allowed him to control and abuse me) that I was weak. But this fool didn’t realize that when I’m not invested, I fight just as hard to be free as I did to make it work, and now all that energy is focused on nailing his drunk, abusive ass to the wall and protecting my precious baby. If you’ve been so kind as to read this far, please wish me luck.