by Tanya Burton

Created on: April 17, 2008

My world can only be described by the words "twilight zone". Anyone remember that show? It freaked me out when I was younger. How could people live such seemingly normal lives that just turn on a dime in only minutes? One moment here we see a nice fellow but he's just a little phobic and it somehow turns very wrong on him and the source of his phobia overtakes his entire livelihood, ending in his unsighly demise. Oh my gosh! A phobia?

Yes, well sometimes life takes a turn like that. Four years ago I was a nursing school student, full-time mother to two young boys, wife to a man who had ruined my self-worth for ten years. I decided to leave that man, of course. I took my boys to the city and we began our lives together without the turmoil of my marriage to their dad. Well, of course I couldn't continue with nursing school with two young children and an apartment to pay for so I had to go back to a job that I had known before school. I went back to the city and re-applied to be a police officer. They put me on the midnight shift and I had to let my to-be-ex-husband watch them at night for me. Seems innocent enough from that angle I'm sure.

Only a few weeks after I took my children and our things to a better place I was issued a temporary order to release custody of the children to their dad because of my work shift and their location from school. I had been commuting 30 miles per day to take them to their schools in the county we had lived in. That order turned into a permanent nightmare when we went to court for custody. The judge issued my ex-husband physical custody of the children because of my work shift and for living in the city. These were the reasons given to me with the statement, "Miss, you just can't be a parent and work that shift. I have nothing else to go by in this decision."

Okay, can I just say that after the 5 minutes it took me to fully understand the blow that had just been delivered-the children that I brought with me that morning were not going home with me even though it was a day of agreed visitation-four years of utter and total chaos and hell have since been delivered. I asked myself how a mother who knows only the love of her children and how only to care for her children and to be depended on by them can so very suddenly become almost a non-part of their daily lives. So very suddenly! How could any of us deal with such an extreme change? Their dad and I had been sharing them daily before the hearing. There was hardly a day that went

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