CSA – a tool my ex-wife can pick up and beat me around the head with

I can’t sleep…

It’s the early hours of the morning, I’m tired, I’m a soldier and I’ve worked hard all day… all week and am desperate for sleep. But I can’t sleep.

What keeps me awake you wonder? The answer is being annoyed. The CSA are not solely responsible, they are just a simple tool that my ex-wife can pick up and beat me around the head with.

I don’t know why she feels like she should do this. She had an affair. She left with another man. She had the map and everyone around her followed like sheep. Even my children who were once loyal to our relationship are now lost in the fog that is her.

I started a new job on promotion, I was punching above my weight taking it on. But I was sure I could do it. She managed to write a letter to my new boss to tell him that it was terrible that he allowed a soldier of such a rank to not pay his way with child support… I have never missed a payment as ordered.

I love those words… ‘As ordered’. I get ordered to do a lot of things that aren’t pleasant as a soldier. None cause me as much internal pain as being ordered to pay a women who doesn’t use those funds to clothe my children properly! Badly fitting shoes and worn out clothes but she always manages to look good with hair extensions which she takes on fantastic holidays.

I can’t sleep, but I have to find a way to do so, because I have a new wife who is calmly sat back watching all of this drama unfold. She rubs my shoulders while I make these calls to the betrayers of human decency (CSA). She does all this while carrying my child. That’s right, I haven’t given up. I want to be a father a dad. Not over the phone, not as a bank account number, but as the man that she and them try to hammer down with their acts of parliament and statutory regulations.

Common sense does not seem to prevail, but self-respect must always. I will keep that one thing.

I summed up my experience in all this in these words. I hope you find something in them too:

‘The Humble Warrior’

Age no longer concerns me, the lines are of times gone, So it is with greying hair, once where dark hair shone.
I have not stood in glory, as the battles raged around, As enemies stood at my gates, loyalty no longer abound.

But one stood at my side, she came at the battles height, When their strength was good, and mine had since taken flight.
Now, the pain of war is dulled, dulled with his brother fear, These two strangers to me now, they no longer stay near.

I re-learned my knowledge lost, and wear their anger as a cloak, I stand tall in fields of doubt, and see clearly through the smoke.
I will only own my strength, while this angel shows me faith, And with her love beside me, a warrior is made.

Jan 2010 – Author