Episode 06 – Don’t Judge Me – Transcript

Episode 06 – Don’t Judge Me – Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to Twisted Thinking, the podcast and helps you keep your thoughts flexible. 

My name is Kristin and today we are talking about judgment. Specifically, this meme about judgment that I ran across on Facebook a few weeks ago. 

The meme says this. 

“Don’t judge people for the choices they make when you don’t know the options they had to choose from.” 

Now I want to start out by saying I believe the intention behind this is good. 

It’s encouraging you to have an open mind and it’s pointing out that we never really know the whole story and I don’t see anything wrong with that at all. 

But I do believe it falls just short of being as positive and motivating a message as it could be, because it places conditions on your non-judgment. 

And what I mean by that is it’s implying that if you do know all the choices and all the options that they had, or if you think you do – which is basically the same thing – that it’s OK to judge someone. And for this reason, I wanted to put my own twist on it.  

Before I do, though, I want to tell you a story from my life to illustrate a situation that seems cut and dry but actually was not. 

Please note there is a small trigger warning for suicidal ideation. 

I mentioned in episode one that I was married once before. I told you that I left three months into the marriage, but what I didn’t tell you is that neither one of us filed for divorce at that time and 13 years later, give or take a year or two, we very briefly became a couple again. I don’t have any biological children, but he does, and we had two of them living with us. 

Without going into detail, a few years prior, he had signed paperwork giving me guardianship of the older of the two and during this time that we were together, he and I spoke at length about getting the same paperwork done with his youngest so that I wouldn’t have any issue with schools or doctors or anything else. 

Unfortunately, that never happened and the reason it never happened is because some of the original problems he and I had dealt with the first time around popped up bigger and badder than ever. 

Problems like his daily drinking and the recreational drug use that was no longer recreational. 

It didn’t take very long before I felt like I was taking care of three kids. 

It was an environment that was increasingly uncomfortable, and I felt that it was becoming dangerous. 

Of course, I tried to talk to him and talk about making changes, but really everything eventually failed, and I knew that we had to leave. Now it took a little time before I found a safe place to go, and I waited until the night before we were set to leave to tell him that we were going. 

And so, we did. 

And by we, I mean myself and the one child I had some rights to. 

Yes, that means I left the youngest a 6-year-old who was developmentally delayed and had special needs with a single, alcoholic, drug-abusing, mentally unstable man. 

This is the version of the story that nearly all of my friends and family were told, and I’m guessing you have some of the same questions and concerns that they had. 

You’re probably wondering why I left the youngest and why I didn’t push for the paperwork to be completed before I left. 

You’re probably already thinking that you would have done things much, much differently and that I made a selfish choice and took the easy way out. 

You’re entitled to that opinion, and you certainly aren’t alone in that assumption. There were plenty of people who didn’t get why I left the youngest one. I got some sideways looks, but in the end what I mostly got was support with one very notable exception. 

That exception was a loved and trusted friend. She was the first one I called after I left, and I was wracked with guilt and shame, and I desperately needed to be calmed down and spoken to kindly and gently. I needed to be understood and I thought that she would be the one to do it. 

I was very wrong. 

The pure disgust she expressed for my decision was so harsh that I don’t – I didn’t even know how to process it. Even when I described the obvious legal situation, she did not care. Nothing could make her listen and I found myself defending a choice that in reality hadn’t even been a real choice. 

I was an absolute shock. 

So why was she judging me? Because of the second part of the meme I shared with you. 

She thought she knew the whole story. She thought she knew all the choices that I had. She had a whole host of ideas and suggestions as to what I should have done and what she would have done, and she truly believed that I had made the most immoral decision of all and had willingly and wantonly abandoned a child that trusted me. 

In her opinion, I was the bad guy here because on the surface I was. She made me question myself and because of that I’ve stayed silent about this situation all these years, even though I know what the outcome was and that it was – in fact – best for all involved. 

Today to help illustrate my point, I am going to explain what really happened that night and what kept me from bringing a kid I considered my own with me instead of leaving them behind. 

I knew that telling my husband we were leaving was not going to go well, so I waited until the night before we left on purpose. I had been packing little things, you know, personal belongings and whatnot, slowly over the previous week. We, we weren’t taking any household items, it was just our things, so it was pretty easy to hide, and I planned on finishing with like clothes and essentials that would be noticed the night before we were leaving. 

So, after dinner that evening I told him. 

And he was upset. 

He was very upset, but he wasn’t unruly about it. 

After a short conversation, he seemed to accept it and I went to my room to start packing and he went to his room to do whatever it was he was going to do. 

I got done packing just in time to put the kids to bed so I sent them in to say goodnight to him and as usual I waited in the doorway until they were done so that I could go and tuck them in. 

While I was waiting, I was looking around the room and I noticed some pills laying on the floor next to his bed and then I noticed the empty Jim Beam bottle. 

And it took a second for me to put the two together and realize what was happening, but as soon as I did, I ushered the children out, made sure that they were safe, got them into bed and then I tried to figure out how bad the situation was. 

I talked to him, and I determined that he had taken almost two months’ worth of one of his medications and then washed it down with over half a liter of bourbon. 

I tried to call 911 but he wouldn’t let me. He threatened some very plausible things that had to do with the oldest child if I did and it scared me enough that I couldn’t call the authorities, it was not an option. 

So technically I had every choice in the world. I could have called 911 and brought the paramedics along with the police. I could have called social services, or I could have even just left the house and taken off into the night. 

The real choices I had, however, were limited to a very small handful. I could wait for him to lose consciousness and call 911. I could wait for him to die and call 911, or I could go against his wishes, call 911 and risk the fallout. Or I could do what I ended up doing which was the one choice that I felt put everyone in the least amount of danger. 

I wrapped the kids up and I tucked them into my bed at the front of the house I turned on some music to drown out the sounds coming from the back, and I sat in the living room waiting for the morning and praying the entire time that they wouldn’t remember anything. 

Once the sun rose, I went to the back to check on him. 

I needed to see if he was still alive. 

And thank God he was, and surprisingly he responded when I called his name. But as you can imagine, he was really not well. 

So, this is where I had to make another choice. 

I had to, you know, did I – did I have pity and stay until things were stable. 

Did I try and talk to him and get him help now that he was somewhat lucid? 

Did I give in to the manipulation until I was able to get the custody paperwork for the youngest, or did I stick to my plan and leave? 

In my head, I absolutely knew the only logical and safe thing to do was to leave because this was not a new tactic for him. And by staying I would only make things 1000 times worse and possibly even more violent when I tried to leave the next time. 

Still, though, if it had just been myself, I might have stayed to help, but this time the stakes were so much higher than they had been 13 years before when we were young and childless. 

My choices had far reaching consequences in the lives of two young and innocent children, and my heart was breaking as I weighed the options. 

I realized that taking both of them with me was not a real possibility. 

The best-case scenario was that my husband wouldn’t care, and he would let us go without a fight and that magically everything would work out with legal paperwork, finances, and literally everything else. 

Worst case was that he did care, and he called the police the moment we left the county and reported a kidnapping. I would be arrested and then what would happen to the kids? 

Sure, things would most likely get worked out, but how long would that take? 

Months, years, weeks, days? I don’t know. And while this was being worked out, where would they be? 

While I wasn’t able to take care of them and how would all of that affect them long term? Last of all, what if it didn’t actually get worked out? What then? 

Because I knew that the worst case had already been threatened and that the law was on his side, even if it shouldn’t have been, I loaded up myself, one kid, a cat and we left. 

Now even this version of the story is still just a shadow of what really happened that night, and all of the things that went into my decision-making process. 

I’m still sharing it because I want you to know no matter what you think you know about a situation – you don’t. If you aren’t living it, you don’t have all of the pieces, and this goes for other people judging you too. They don’t have all of your pieces; they are just as not qualified to question you and your choices as you are not qualified to question them and their choices. 

And so, I offer a twist on this meme.  

I wanted to make it as possible positive as possible, but also realistic because we’re human. It’s hard to not judge people. Most of us have a moral compass and anything that deviates from what we think is right elicits a response and that response – that judgment – is something that is hard not to express aloud, especially if it’s someone we’re close to or comfortable with. 

So, here’s my edited version. 

Don’t judge, but if you can’t keep yourself from judging, keep your judgement to yourself. 

It’s my hope that if we at least keep our judgment to ourselves, then we might be able to avoid inflicting the kind of pain and guilt and shame that I went through when my friend reacted the way that she did, and that, to me, is worth sharing the story with you. 

What do you think? Am I being too critical of this mostly positive and upstanding idea? Do you have an experience that you would like to share that illustrates the fact? Do you have anything else to add? Let me know. 

That’s all for today. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, head over to https://www.podchaser.com/TwistedThinking and leave a review. If something I said caught your attention and you want to continue the conversation, I invite you to join my discord server. It’s free and easy to use. Just click here. Big thanks to my patrons without them, none of this would be possible. 

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time be blessed and stay twisted.