An Extra Day With Daughter

Yesterday we helped one of my boyfriends cousins finish what has been a months longs move out of her beautiful lakeside home because of divorce.
I'll call her M. M once had it all, a great job, dream home, a marriage and a child. She lived the American dream, until the one who promised to keep that dream alive turned into a failure as a husband, a man and most likely a father. Apparently he's deviant  and can't or wont' hold a steady job.
The tragedy of divorce is in it's very existence. One out of every two marriages in the US ends in divorce, that's fifty  percent for those who are mathematically challenged.
I have been divorced and even with those odds I would marry my soul mate, not because I'm crazy but because I believe in the power of love, our love, that aside, divorce is a painful poisonous epidemic eating away at our morale and our future. There is nothing more painful than realizing that you made a mistake you never saw coming.
M lost everything to a petty, narrow minded individual who used everything she had against her including their daughter. He ran her through months and months of a long and bank breaking divorce; only to give her meager leftovers in then end. He was at fault and yet the court coddled him as they do criminals these days. They took from her ,like ringing water from a rag and the court took advantage of her just as much as he did. In the end though, M got one thing, and extra day with her daughter.  That's what , living is all about. It's about knowing priorities and putting love of another human being ahead of everything else.
She walked away tired and a bit defeated,but in long run she won and he will pay the price for being a bad person.
My boyfriend, too was treated like a criminal in divorce court and the judge robbed him of everything he and he alone had built from scratch, not his deadbeat X but he and he alone. The judge forgot his role in the demise of their thirty year life, that being the mediator and dispenser of justice, not lopsided taking of sides.
I have been divorced and walked away with nothing but literally the clothes on my body. I had to rebuild myself from the ground up. I was left empty and betrayed, abused and broken, I was a victim of unspeakable violence and got no points for my skills at surviving or my ability to be the better person.
I do wonder if in some cases divorce happens because the idea of settling in and getting on with life is either incomprehensible to some or they never intended to abide by the vows they took, vows that are an actual contract with a license you have to sign when the dust settles. Maybe some just wanted the pretty dress, cake and attention or maybe they wanted  all of it so badly they married the wrong person for the wrong reasons. I know it can also be that when comfort sets in; the cracks in the plaster reveal themselves like the ones on the walls of new house that's settling into the ground.
We are a nation of expert actors, people who can put on a stone solid performance as long as needed to hear 'I Do' . Now that's not too say that marriage is bad or couples who really do marry for life are liars. They are not cheating the system, maybe they just got lucky or maybe they accept their mate with all their perfect imperfections, their acceptable and harmless imperfections.
There are human actions though that are simply unacceptable to any decent person and that's what drove me to the courthouse as it did so many others.
I feel it's important to also recognize the fault that lays at the door of our justice system.  It is too easy to get married and too difficult to end it. The courts need to hold themselves accountable for the injustices they allow to unfold in our nation's courtrooms. They propagate the money machine by allowing lawyers to soak people when most vulnerable and allow divorces to drag on and order mediators and parenting experts at the cost of thousands. The reason people have to even involve the court is because that license you sign on your wedding day is a legal and binding contract.
When people are hurt and frightened they lash out and try to preserve what they can because their  survival is on the line and they have to fight to keep what is theirs.
Divorce hits you in gut like a meteor, it strips you of your dignity and confidence and it makes you feel betrayed. At the end of a long painful battle you sign the papers because you are too tired to fight anymore and most times there is at that point nothing left to fight for. The house is gone, the furniture divided. The car and credit cards divivied up like the take from a bank robbery.
And all you want to do is just sleep.
You get up the next day and realize that you survived the fight, your bruises will fade and you get on with life and savor those little victories like losing the house but getting an extra day of visitation with the only good that came out of your nuptuals, that being your children and your wounded but fixable relationship with them. In the end all that matters is those little take aways,  like the tv, your favorite painting, your jewelry and an extra day with daughter.