Stigma creeps up on you and never goes away
OK, so yesterday I had just finished a post after working on it for 1/2 hour, and was just proofing it when I opened a link from email and POOF! all that writing gone. Yesterday I just decided, fuck it. Not writing it all over. It was about my birthday. It was a good birthday. I practiced being thankful. And I felt it. It wasn’t hard. Each of my kids at least paid a visit. Spence managed to wrangle a cake, ice cream AND presents… Shocked the heck out of me and made me feel loved. I spent time reflecting on how healing has made me so aware of the little things in life, and how I am so grateful for them. And how it reinforces the work I’ve done and continue to do. All of that good stuff. Might have balanced what I’m going to write about now since I’m really angry.
I know that in break ups it happens all the time. You divide the friends. Good intentions all around, but it still happens. Gradually over time people move to one camp or the other, particularly if the break up was bad or bitter.
In my case, there were a few people who I expected to stay somewhat neutral. Having known both my ex and I for some time, I figured they knew us both well enough to stay out of it.
I guess I was wrong. Last week I wrote about losing a friend to the casualty of assumptions. It would appear that that goes even deeper. His wife too, apparently, has fallen prey to the ramblings of my oh-so-honey-tongued when he wants to be ex. I guess the fact that he’s had a couple months of therapy, and that he was hit by Katrina has made all of the years of his previous actions pale in comparison to me having BiPolar. That the fact that he molested my daughter and beat on my son are both figments of my crazed mind. Last week I was willing to let go with only some sorrow. This week I’m pissed. Royally.
I guess I just need to let go completely. Which writing this will help. But it really just burns me up to know that this man is completely twisting everything around to make me be some sort of crazy idiot whose whole mission in life is to destroy him by making up all of this stuff. Ugggg. I don’t want to do anything to him. I’d rather I never had to do anything with him. I only care what happens as far as our son is concerned.
I didn’t make him leave. I didn’t make him give up having Mark in his home. I didn’t make it so that he never called once he’d left. You’d think that he was father of the year by his accounting and that I am just hatefully keeping him from his son. Even by his own admission he didn’t call Mark because “he didn’t want to hear the hate in my voice”… I just don’t understand it. I would talk to the devil himself (not that I believe in one) to talk to my child. I would never leave the state he was in. I would never give up seeing him as much as I could, I don’t care how much I needed to take care of myself. Being with my children is PART of taking care of myself. Not only that, I gave up some of that ability to be selfish when I had children. Yes, it is necessary to take care of yourself, to heal, to work through things and deal with loss. But I don’t know of many experts who would recommend that a person doing that give up all contact with their child to do so. That just damages the child.
Anyway this ranting is about the fact that I am apparently being painted to be a crazed person with a personal vendetta, regardless of evidence to the contrary both impartial (official records, etc) and review of previous actions… But the reality is I have no control over it. Not what is being said, not what is being done, not what others choose to believe, none of it. And I need to stop trying to control it.
And so I will. Just thinking about it is making me crazy. That in itself makes me realize how unhealthy this is. And so I’m walking away. Setting aside those old friends. Giving up because I know that everything I do now will be seen through the filter of the lense of my ex husband’s words. And knowing that I’ve been in treatment a hell of a lot longer, knowing that I have healthy people and professionals around me who affirm what I’m doing, believing and saying - that is enough. I have nothing to prove except to myself. And I need to just let go.
