If you are new to this blog, you may want to read the posts “In a Nutshell” or go to July 2012 and read “Sending out a Letter.” My daughter Emma Katherine Roey lied about a friend being raped and attempting suicide, claimed to have been molested by a priest, and then, just as her attorneys were about to file a law suit, Emma accused her mother (me) of physically abusing her and later of poisoning her with DDT. Emma claimed to have a toxicology report to confirm that her mother (me, again!) poisoned her, but would never turn over this report to my attorney. If you read through the blog, you will find many other examples of Emma’s lying. At one point, she even complained about the way her dad touched her and that he called her a “bitch” and a “slut” everyday. (I refused to listen to her when she talked about her dad like that.) As long as Emma continues with the lies, I will tell her story. Love and thanks to all of you who read and have written to me. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com Please continue to share the blog with others.

Trifecta

This post is really for Emma, so I am writing to her.

Emma, BTW, I heard again from someone in Santa Rosa, CA who was looking for you.  You might want to let everyone know where you are.   Oh, Emma, Emma, Emma how many times did I tell you, if you are hiding what you’re doing, then maybe it’s something you shouldn’t be doing.

I haven’t wanted to write about your dad or your dad’s family, but since we can’t talk, and even your dad can’t talk about what you did, I will write it here.  Today, I will tell you about your dad’s midlife crisis.

I have to admit, I was really disappointed in your dad.   I always had too much faith in your dad.  I’d always thought he would do anything to take care of us.  Well, I was half right.  I thought when he realized your friend was never raped, never attempted suicide, her mother was never dying of breast cancer, you never babysat for the neighbors down the street although you made up some great stories.  You never babysat for our former priest and never had to call 911 on his bipolar son, and you were never molested by another priest………………  I really thought your dad would apologize and want to get to the bottom of your problems.  And later on, I found out you were telling people that Tyler’s mom, Sherry Knopp Buchheim was afraid I would show up in Liberty Township, Ohio and kill her whole family and that I poisoned you with DDT and you had the toxicology report to prove it,  I e-mailed your dad, but he just couldn’t deal with it.  He e-mailed back that he refused to discuss you with me.   I was kind of shocked when he just ignored everything you did.  I was hurt too.  I always believed in your dad, and believed he would do what’s right, even if it took him a while to realize how wrong he was.  He always called himself a “secular humanist” and he didn’t have any need for religion.  He wasn’t quite an atheist, but more agnostic.  He wasn’t quite convinced about the whole God thing, but he thought of himself as a good person, and he was.  Well, he was until things got difficult.  Part of it was that your dad was going through a midlife crisis and part of it was your dad’s upbringing, and I will tell you about both of these.  Your dad just doesn’t like difficult stuff and just chooses not to handle things.

Emma, I don’t blame you for the divorce, or at least not all of it.  You were just a part of it.  So many people joked about my daughter being “the other woman” and you really were.  I was the one who stuck up for your dad when you made fun of him when he wasn’t around.  I was the one who reminded you how hard he worked so we could have a nice home and nice things and you could do all the activities you were involved in.  You thought your dad was stupid because he didn’t finish college.  You made fun of him for being a truck driver, but he made a good living working for UPS.  Something you didn’t think I noticed was how jealous you were of the way Daddy treated me, like when he brought me my coffee in the mornings.  I remember how when Daddy would see a book by my favorite author at Costco and bring it home, you almost couldn’t stand it.  You looked at me like I was something evil, even though you read my books too!  I never realized my own daughter was jealous of the relationship between my husband and myself.  It was like you couldn’t stand for me to get the attention or the little gifts.  Then, after I was thrown out of my home, you became the little woman, doing the shopping, loading the dishwasher, taking care of the pets.  I saw your posts on facebook before you removed me.  You took over as the woman of the house.  I guess that was your practice marriage.

Emma, remember when we’d get the $10 JCPenney coupons in the mail.  We always let you have them and took you to buy something with them, but the one time I said I was going to use one because I could use something decent to wear to my job at the homeschool arts program, you go furious with me.  I don’t know what we did that you turned out to be so selfish and vicious, and I know it wasn’t just me.  I wondered if part of the reason you talked so badly about the girls you rode the bus with was because you were jealous of them.  Maybe you were too insecure at school, so you had to make others look bad.  And remember when we had the baby shower for the unmarried daughter of one of our friends at Bible Study?  You were so jealous of the gifts and attention she got for doing something you considered shameful.  I tried to talk to you about how she was a lucky girl to have a family that supported her because she was traveling down a difficult road.  You couldn’t see it that way at all.  You just thought she didn’t deserve a shower for having a baby and not being married.  Well, I digress.  I really wanted to write about your dad’s midlife crisis, so let me get back to that.  I just keep hoping you will get your life turned around Emma, but I know it’s not going to happen.  Some people live their whole lives a lie, and I’m afraid that’s where you are headed.

Your dad couldn’t face what you did and still can’t.  It was easier to throw his wife out than to face the truth about his daughter.  After all, blood is thicker than water.  And also, your dad comes from a family with a high divorce rate.  Even though he made a marriage vow, and he vowed to get counseling or help if we were every at the point of divorce, your dad just couldn’t do it.  It was easier to walk away.  When your uncle cheated on his first wife, your grandmother, who has been divorced twice, just wanted her son to be happy, while your grandfather told your uncle that he had an obligation to his family.  At the time, I did wish your grandfather was still living because I don’t believe he would have fallen for all your drama and he would have talked some sense into your dad.

Your dad always joked about how lucky I was that his midlife crisis was RC planes.  It’s kind of funny because your dad was always the one who talked about “self-fulfilling prophecies” too.  Since I was a worrier, can’t help it, it’s just my nature, your dad would always tell me if you worry enough about something happening it probably will.

About a month before all the drama at Suzie McGravey’s office, where you wanted to go live in a group home, Daddy was working on a friend’s computer and talking about our plans for retirement, how he wanted to get a camper or an RV and we planned on doing some traveling, and of course because he was all into the RC planes, we would be going to a lot of RC shows.  So yes, at this point in my life I thought your dad and I would be retired, or close to it, and you would be out of the house, and we’d be doing some traveling.  You never know what life is going to throw at you, do you?  Anyway, this friend, who yes, knew you, was so shocked that all of a sudden your dad wanted a divorce and that he was letting you manipulate him so.  All of a sudden, according to your dad, there was “too much water under the bridge.”  How do you go from talking about retiring with your wife one month, and then the next month wanting a divorce?

Daddy really had all the classic signs of a midlife crisis.  Everything was RC planes, and I heard that a year or so later he bragged about taking almost 100 planes to SEFF, but when we were married, he had maybe a dozen planes.  That is some major money he spent for planes and motors.  That gets pretty expensive.

What was also a shock was that our family was going through a major crisis, and yet Daddy took off every chance he could to go to RC shows for days at a time:  SEFF, Joe Nall, and I don’t remember where the one was he went to up north (Midwest) was.  What kind of man goes traveling the country when his family is in crisis?  Our poor, supposedly “sexually abused” daughter was left home alone or with the neighbors or dragged around the country to RC shows?  What kind of man does that?

Another classic sign of a midlife crisis was the camper.  A lot of men go out and buy a sports car, but your dad spent $23,000 on a camper as well as all the RC planes?  Again, he sure wasn’t hurting for money.  Maybe I should have hired a forensic accountant like one friend wanted to do.  I don’t know where Daddy came up with all this money but then, I was just the dumb housewife who let my husband handle all the money.  Let that be a lesson to you!  Don’t let Tyler handle all the money.  Remember how I was trying to get daddy to teach me how to do the on line banking and he was so reluctant to do so?  I was more worried about if something happened to him that I wouldn’t know how to pay the bills.  I didn’t even know how much money we had in the bank.

Daddy had always been an introvert, like me.  We were always happy at homes, doing things together or near each other like when he would work on airplanes upstairs and I would work on my glass stuff.  I had looked forward to more of these times when you left home, but that was not to be.  BTW, what did you do with my glass studio?

Once Daddy discovered his RC friends, he really came out of his shell.  He found a crowd he fit into.  He became a big fish in a small pond.  He became one of the “cool kids” and wanted to hang out with them and fly planes and sit around at night and drink beer.  He no longer needed a homebody wife who fostered dogs and spent Saturdays at adoptions.  That wasn’t going to fit into his new life.  We never talked about it, but I figured I would quit fostering, or maybe foster a small dog that we could take with us in the future camper.  I supposed a lot of this is my fault because I was the one who encouraged Daddy to get back into his childhood hobby of RC planes.

Daddy was always freaked out about the idea of menopause.  Even when you were just a little thing, Daddy worried about it.  He often brought up that you would be going starting your cycle around the same time I would hit menopause.  I just made a joke about it, but he brought it up so often, I should have realized he was having a problem.  Then, when I had the hysterectomy, Daddy freaked out that I was going to become a crazed mad woman.  Actually, the hysterectomy had the opposite effect of what your dad was afraid of.  My hormones were so messed up because of the fibroids and cysts, that I felt so much better afterwards and wished I done it 10 years earlier.

Funny how your dad called me your “sexless parental unit.”  I’ve met several other women who went through divorces because their husbands were so freaked out about menopause.  All of a sudden, these men realize they are getting old.  Well, they don’t think they are, but they think their wives are, so they dump them.  I’ve also heard stories from the adult children of parents who divorced because their dad’s freaked over menopause.  It’s really not that uncommon.

Your Aunt Chatty Kathy used to talk about the “burnt cookies” divorce, which was really the same kind of thing.  She described it as how one partner in the marriage freaked out and basically said, “You burned the cookies!  Oh my God, I want a divorce!”  All of a sudden everything that was ever wrong in your life is the fault of your spouse.  You can ask her about it, but it was how your dad acted too.  He couldn’t handle our family crisis, so OMG, let’s get a divorce.

I will never forget some of the things your dad said to me.  When I was over at your “Aunt Janice’s” and he came over and brought me some things, we were arguing, I don’t remember about what.  He was going to leave, and he put his arms around me and told me he loved me, but “I’ve put up with a lot.”  Really?  Isn’t that what married people do?  Was your dad so perfect that I didn’t put up with anything?  No, I put up with a lot, too, but I loved your dad and part of loving someone is putting up with their faults.  Hopefully, you and Tyler have been married long enough now to realize that it’s not all puppies and rainbows.  Tyler has his faults, and you have some of your own.

Well, Emma, I think I’ve pretty much covered your dad’s midlife crisis.  At the time, I didn’t realize what it was, but after a little distance, it was easy to see Daddy had so many of the classic signs.   Even through all of it, I thought your dad would eventually get himself together and do what’s right.  He knows he messed up, but daddy cares too much about what people think of him to admit it.  He’s just not strong enough to face his friends, family, and neighbors after all that he did and let you get away with.  He’d rather go on living the lie.

And speaking of that, there is so much your dad owes me.  (Oh dear, do I sound like you Emma?  You had me, you owe me?  You married me, you owe me?)  No, your dad knows what he did wrong and what he took from me.  He owes me a furnished home, a fenced yard, etc.  Funny how we were updating the house with a new fridge, new dishwasher, the counters, the floor, and the new shelves on the sunporch.  Daddy owes me a furnished house.  All the little things like cookware and cutlery, linens, a bed, appliances, etc.  I could use a couple of ceiling fans, so be a dear and ask Daddy to put them in for me.  He’s got my number.  Oh, and a funny story about that, when I asked Daddy for the stand-up fan, he brought me the industrial fan!  I know you haven’t been in my house, but daddy has.  It’s about 900 square feet and that fan was way too much for this house.  I ended up giving it away.  I used to joke about Daddy’s passive-aggressive streak, and there it was!

Here’s a photo of the sun porch that we’d just spent about $2500 on new shelves for:

I’m sure by now Daddy got the flatscreen tv he wanted for that bare spot, even though he wouldn’t let me have the old giant monster tv that was sitting in the garage.

And here is the $10 bookshelf, leftover from homeschooling, that was out in the garage to get rid of that Daddy gave me when he had me thrown out of my home:

Your dad sure made out like a bandit from the divorce, didn’t he?  Well, after what my attorney told me, there was no way I was going to go near the house, and Daddy was certainly not going to divide up the household fairly or bring me my things, although he did bring me a few things at first.  I will write more about that part of the divorce later on.

So, Emma are you out of school for the summer?  Are you working?  And what about Tyler?  Is he going to school for his Master’s or did he start working?  I’ve always heard you need a master’s in architecture to really do anything, but I don’t know much about it.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about your dad’s family and his upbringing and you will understand a little better why your dad can’t handle a confrontation or face the hard stuff.  You’ve heard all about my family, and by now you may have realized that every family has it’s on kind of dysfunction.  Ours did too, but we had a lot of love and I always thought that would see us through.  Wrong again.  When I tell you a little about your dad’s family and his upbringing, you will be able to understand why your dad is the way he is.

So long for now, Emma.  Love you.