I Want to Go Home

I had a dream the other night that all my belongings were in my car (along with a bunch of money I don't really have). My boys and I were driving along a country road just outside of one of the midwestern towns where I grew up. We didn't know where we were going to stay, but happened upon a little cafe with a welcoming glow and live music spilling out it's open door. With nowhere else to go, we entered the establishment and soaked up the friendly ambiance.

Staying until closing, I stepped out the door confident that it had been worth taking this little break, even if it meant sleeping in the car tonight. That's when the shocker came....

An empty curb...

             ...where my loaded car had been. 

I woke up and stared at the ceiling, looking past the teenage boy-band posters on the wall of the room in which my air mattress found it's temporary station. My youngest daughter was there with me, my sons were still asleep on the hide-a-bed in the next room, and my car was parked safely in the driveway, loaded down with our junk, like in the dream (but without the imaginary cash). I was grateful. We were not sleeping on the streets, and at least the four of us were under the same roof for the time-being.

The dream, however, haunted me throughout the day yesterday. Was it merely the expression of my fears of this displacement going on until we've used up our welcome and have nowhere to turn, or did it have some deep meaning or warning I need to heed? 

As I drove back to the place I was staying last night, I thought about how a few hours earlier the fact that I had extracted certain files from my house (so that I didn't have to worry about Todd rifling through them or destroying them) had brought me such comfort. The comfort suddenly shifted to an extreme feeling of vulnerability. Those files were in my vehicle. As the dream had demonstrated, a vehicle is not the safest storage place. And there are other keys to this vehicle. My mind started running through questions about where those other keys were. I knew I had hidden some of them, but might my older daughters have left one in a place where Todd could find it? Another event multiplied these feelings of vulnerability: 

A few hours earlier, my youngest daughter had called me in total panic. "Daddy is here," she had said. She was at church youth group, a place that has been a haven of safety for her, and he showed up with a friend whose daughter was playing in the band. I texted his friend, who apparently knew nothing about our "little problems" and had just brought Todd along to see the band play. My daughter just left, but she was shaken up by this safe place being invaded by the nightmare she had fled. Todd's friend had no clue what was going on and told him about my text (which alerted him to the fact that our daughter was indeed there and had seen him and had a problem with it.) Todd texted our daughter, saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you would be there. I hope we can work this out."

She told me this on the phone as I was driving. "I hope we can work this out..." I thought, If you really want to do that, just getting out of the house so we can go home would go a long way.

I'm wondering if I should tell him that? Maybe that would give him false hope -- as in thinking that that and going to counseling are an automatic recipe to get back "his life." He probably doesn't even realize how far beyond "a long way" we have to go for him to even gain a sliver of trust.

Something's got to give, though. My biggest questions are: How much more do I say (if anything) before getting a restraining/kick-out order? Do I tell him that's going to happen in advance, or surprise him with it? 

I want to go home and have a comfortable, safe place for my kids where we can function and live.