An Open Letter to the Loser

**Anonymity be DAMNED. If anyone knows this jerk, please kick him where it counts for me. And if you have the stomach, you can see a picture of him here.**

Dear Richard Sterling Benson III,

How ironic it is that someone with such a classy sounding name could be such a piece of total shit! Yet there it is. I felt it necessary to write you this letter because it is about time people knew the whole story – and maybe karma will finally bite you in the ass like it should have a long time ago. Anyway, I digress.

When I first met you, you were nothing to me. Wait, I shouldn’t say that. You were the weird looking guy who always had money and drugs and beer. In my addled state, you seemed nice enough. Once Kevin snapped and I had found myself single again, you were there to comfort me. Addicts can be really single-minded, as you well know, and I knew that you had a big enough crush on me to allow me to crash at your place and party a lot, much to that bimbo Terry’s chagrin. I found it kind of comical that she wanted you so badly when I was only using you to party. She was so pathetic, too. How old was Aaron when she first came back from California? Two? If that, I bet. How sad that a mother would spend the child support she received on crack instead of diapers. I bet the towels she wrapped his little bottom in gave him BAD diaper rash. And it couldn’t have been good for him to be held by her while she took hits off the crack pipe. I mean, secondhand cigarette smoke was bad enough, but secondhand CRACK smoke? Ask him if he remembers that, because I do. Oh, and I also remember that one time he grabbed the coffee table with his little toddler hands to balance himself and almost knocked some rocks off the edge. Boy, did Terry scream at that!

So yes, I slept with you. And believe me, it was not an enjoyable experience. But I was so out of my mind on drugs that it didn’t really matter. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the way it was. When I really couldn’t take it anymore, I ended it and moved home. You were way older than me, and so totally not my type, and I just couldn’t bear to be with you anymore, even when I was high. But the few times we were together was obviously enough to get me pregnant.

By that time, you were dating someone else, oh yes, the OTHER Terry, the dark-haired one, another junkie. When I told you I was pregnant, you wanted to get married. I did not. I had no desire to spend any more time with you than I already had. What I wanted was to give the baby up to a better home, because I didn’t think I would be a good mother. An agency was contacted and papers and forms filled out. You told me that you would respect my decision, no matter what it was.

When I had the baby, a precious little girl, you told me that you had decided to give her to your sister, Jackie, in Michigan. I would have no part of that. My father contacted the adoption agency and some poor couple in Georgia got their hearts broken because I decided to keep her instead. You forced my hand by your decision, and though at the time I was upset, that is the one thing I will be grateful for. My life changed radically from that point on. You swore that you would always be there for me and your baby girl, and a counselor at the hospital sat both of us down and explained to you that this was an eighteen year minimum commitment financially, and a lifetime commitment emotionally. You swore up and down that you knew that, and fool that I was, I believed you.

You held her once, at the hospital, and my mother said it warmed her heart, even though she really didn’t like you.

When we both were released form the hospital, I am ashamed to admit that it still took me three months before I realized how important my angel was to me. I continued partying, and letting my mother take care of her. But then it was like I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t live like that anymore, I wanted to be a good mother, I wanted to stop using, I wanted help. I worked my ass off in recovery and made new friends and got a real job. I paid for daycare for my daughter so I could work, got an apartment on my own, and stayed clean. During this time, you made no contact with us at all. I filed the appropriate papers in court to obtain child support, but since you worked for Cook County yourself and your father obviously had some sort of pull, being a retired Police chief in Park Ridge and all, the process was slow and eventually came to a complete stop.

You were making over $40,000.00 a year, but didn’t pay a dime to your own daughter. Eventually, because I fought tooth and nail, an order was established, and your checks were garnished and she finally had health insurance at the age of two. When this all happened, you asked if you could see her. I asked if you were clean, and you told me yes. You told me you stopped drinking the case of beer a day you always drank, and stopped smoking the $100 worth of crack a day you smoked. I asked where you got the help. You told me you “just stopped.” You were lying, and I knew it. I told you to call back if you made a serious effort to get clean, because I did not want my daughter to be exposed to an alcoholic junkie, father or not. You never called again.

Then, guess what? You lost your job. Or maybe you quit, I’m still not sure. In any case, the child support payments stopped, and when I took Lexie to the doctor when she was sick, I was told that her insurance had been cancelled. I called Blue Cross to find out what happened, and as it turned out, you cobra’ed YOUR insurance and left her without.

Over the next decade, you worked, then quit, then worked, then quit. Your payments were so sporadic, it was pathetic. You hired an attorney to get your payments reduced. I found it amazing you could afford an attorney when you supposedly couldn’t afford child support. Apparently you couldn’t, though, because he removed himself from the case when you stiffed him as well. During this time, you actually MARRIED that skanky first Terry and moved to Holiday, Florida. But you don’t have a phone, I know this because when your attorney needed to call you he had to call your parents to go find you. A forty five year old man without a phone. Say it with me: LOSER. Apparently you have been unemployed now since mid 2004. Yet your parents sent Lexie a picture of you in a cherry picker, and another of you lounging in a speedboat.

The most current court order has set the child support at a measly $60 a week, although it also requires payment of an additional $40 a week for health insurance and daycare expenses. So your total payment is legally $100 a week. Then there is the issue of arrearage. Do you know that you are currently over $31,000.00 in arrears? I bet you don’t even care. Yet over the last three years, you have made a total of $1,590.00 in payments. In THREE YEARS. Because, “good guy” that you are, you are sending piddly checks back to the Illinois Child Support division to keep them from hauling your ass to jail. You must be working for cash, since they cannot find an employer for you. Or maybe you are selling drugs like you used to, I really don’t know. According to the morons that I have spoken to, as long as you “make an effort” they can’t do anything to you. And your last check of $30 to cover six and a half weeks is apparently “making an effort.”

This is utter and total bullshit. If I sent a $50 check to my mortgage company, and said, “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got,” they would take my frickin’ home. They certainly wouldn’t say “Oh, she’s making an effort.” You should rot in jail if you can’t make your payments, asshole. And I shouldn’t be so far in debt because I am busting my ass trying to support myself and a child ON MY OWN. Supposedly Illinois is now working with Florida to get you back into court and to find out what is going on, but know what? I’m not holding my breath.

I guess it says a lot about a person when that person would rather get drunk and high with his new skanky wife in Florida and live off her son’s child support checks than take care of his own child. Or call her. Or be there for her. Although I must admit, she is much better off. And she knows it, too. She knows both you and I had drug problems, but as sure as she is that I got help because I loved her so much and wanted to be the best mother I could, she is also sure that her so-called “father” will never stop using or drinking and is absolutely NOTHING to her. She knows about your new “family” and that you don’t even care about her. She knows that you tried once to contact her, ONCE, and never again after that. And guess what else? She also hates your parents now, because she feels betrayed by them. She feels like they have a part of you that she will NEVER have, and that they could have convinced you to be a real dad. I’ve tried to explain to her that it is not their fault, but she has made up her mind. And really, who can blame her? So guess what, asshole? Your own flesh and blood cannot STAND you. And as much as I agree with her, I also think it really sucks.

I have a great dad. My brother has a son now, and HE is a great dad. Actually, I’m pretty sure even you have a great dad. So it really sickens me that my daughter had to get gypped. Although you know what? She’s better off. You are a NOTHING. A NOBODY. A big, fat, LOSER. And the one good thing in your life is the thing you threw away, abandoned. Shows just how stupid you are. You really don’t even deserve to be a dad, but I guess on some level you already know that.

So the bottom line is, you make me sick to my stomach. I may have made mistakes in my life, but at least I turned my life around and made it something to be PROUD of. You, on the other hand, will spend the rest of your life being hated by a little girl who is capable of so much love. Keep your damn money, if that is what is so important to you. No, forget that. Lexie DESERVES that money. And I will make sure she gets EVERY DAMN PENNY. So you better cut back on your Busch beer and your crack. And watch your back, because someday you might find me in your neck of the woods with a Sheriff’s Deputy and an arrest warrant. Oh, and? Please make sure your life insurance is up to date, because when you die of an overdose or in a shooting from a deal gone bad, I want to make sure Lexie still gets her money.

I guess that’s about it, Rick. Tell Terry I said hello and I hope Aaron is ok, maybe he is safely in the custody of his father now since Lord knows the two of you are piss-poor examples of parents. Have a nice life there in Holiday, Florida, and remember that karma thing. I may be struggling, but I have my daughter and she makes everything worth it. And you, you SOB, you’ll never have her or even KNOW her.

But I still want her money.

Sincerely yours,

Dasi