I know I cannot act it out, this rage. So it is impotent. Impotent, limp-dick rage. I don’t know what all this energy is for; so much of me is going into the anger right now. Is there a constructive direction to take it in? Or must it just rage through in its impotent way?

As much as I want to scream at Sami’s dad for being such an ass, as much as I want to say, “I hope you treat your new baby better than you treat your other two kids,” or “People like you should not be allowed to procreate” or “Get a vasectomy!” I hold it in. I send no more texts; I make no more accusations. I cannot find the root of this. It is bottomless. Perhaps it bubbles up from some pre-verbal experiences of parent loss, that both Sami and I have endured.

I want to write my way through this anger, but I don’t know where to begin or end. I am alone in my house; it is quiet and my son is asleep. He is at peace; I am far from it. I want to shield him, protect him; but I can’t. I can’t protect him from missing or longing for his father, and let’s face it, even regular phone calls from him are not going to take that away.

Yet somehow I can’t help but despise him for not being the father to Sami I want him to be. If I weren’t human, I’d detach some. But this is my son, my boy, the one I most love in the world. I am attached.

I admit to a guilty pleasure of occasionally reading Martha Beck’s column in O magazine. She wrote a piece on impotent rage that struck me, especially the stuff below.

“Mental exit is often more powerful than physical departure. And it may be a crucial escape when you want to physically exit but can’t. Try the Monte Cristo Exit, a strategy I named after the character in Dumas’ famous novel who stays sane in prison by trying to tunnel out. It takes him years, but because he’s working on his escape every day, he survives. The Monte Cristo approach requires you to work every day on your escape plan (finding other means of support, improving your health, saving money) while tolerating an unsavory situation just a bit longer.”

For now, I cannot physically exit from Sami’s dad - as much as I want to. In some ways, the days when he had checked out altogether were so much easier. I did not need to deal with his nastiness, his pettiness, his viciousness on a constant basis.

But he is a presence in our lives. Even when he was absent for nearly a year, he was present. I cannot escape him. What will be my Monte Cristo Exit, as I tolerate this “unsavory situation” as long as I need to for Sami’s sake? I will need to sit with that question for a bit.