The price of civility
So. I had a visitor two day's ago. My ex's mom.
I'm still processing it, I think. It was both... harder and easier than I thought it would be.
She's still pretty angry about her own divorce (he wanted out because he apparently decided he's gay... took him enough years to decide that! :p ). So she can relate to part of what I'm going through but she's just angry clear through, she doesn't love him at all any more so she doesn't relate to that part of it, the whole mixed bag of emotions.
It would simplify things so much if I could turn off the love. I wish I could. It just means that a part of me is still so lost and utterly bewildered because there's still love, and that part keeps feeling guilty whenever I feel anger or hate. Which, admittedly, aren't good emotions to feel but they're at least understandable and uncomplicated. Hell, she's in town (she lives in Arizona) for a funeral and part of me feels guilty about not going to the funeral to be there for her, my ex and the dead man's wife. I don't know how to divorce my feelings from things like that. :( I had promised with my whole heart to love, honor, cherish, to be there for him in good times and bad, and because of his selfish choices I am forced to be forsworn of that promise.
My ex-mom-in-law is also very craft-y and she brought about 30 pairs of earrings that she'd made. She let me pick out the pair I liked best for my Christmas present. Though to a small, very petty part of me the best part of the present was that she said she was NOT making that same offer to Bitchface. ;p
She stayed for a few hours and we talked a lot, cried together, hugged a lot. She's still mystified (join the club) about what he did and said that he doesn't really talk to her. Which has to hurt her too because they used to be really close and talked all the time. She said that she always used to tell people that if there was one thing she knew it was that her son and I would be together forever, she was so sure of how he felt about me, that she'd never known him to be happier.
I don't even begin to know how to feel about that. :/ On one hand it hurt, of course, because he obviously changed at some point, keeping that change from both his mom and me. On the other hand it was reassuring on some level because someone else had felt the same way, saw the same thing. Because he lied for so long it's started to back-color everything for me and to cast doubt on everything so that I've been questioning whether any of it was ever real at all, whether he ever really loved me at all.
One of the hard parts of him divorcing me was losing not just the person I thought was my best friend (not to mention then going through all that pain/anger/depression/etc. without my best friend) but also losing my mom-in-law. Ever since my mom killed herself, I had gotten really close with my ex-mom-in-law so it felt sort of like also losing the only mom I had too. She's not gone I guess but... he's still her son. And she has to try to have some level of civility with her son's current choice of companion, even if she's not happy about it or happy with her son in general. She really doesn't like feeling like she has to choose between what she thinks is right and feeling like she has to support her son because he's her son.
On another family-related note, I managed to have a semi-civilized phone conversation with my dad on Christmas Day. That was only possible because I bit my tongue repeatedly. I wasn't sure I was even going to call him at all given something he'd said to me the last time I'd spoken with him. See, he got re-married. The first I knew about it was a call from him telling me he was going to be getting married sometime last spring and he'd let me know. I, of course, assumed it was going to be with the woman I knew he was dating. Yeah, not so much. He'd apparently broken up with her and gotten involved with someone else so the first time I even heard about the woman was him telling me he was marrying her. Yeah. And then he didn't actually bother to let me know when the wedding actually was which meant, in effect, he didn't invite me to the wedding. Again, charming. On the previous conversation he made the comment "Now that I have a real family" (ie. his new wife and her children and grandchildren). When I attempted to comment on that statement he just point blank ignored me. You can see why I'd need to bite my tongue in order to have a civilized conversation with such a person, right?
Sigh. The mess that my life has become continues apace, I suppose. ;p
I'm still processing it, I think. It was both... harder and easier than I thought it would be.
She's still pretty angry about her own divorce (he wanted out because he apparently decided he's gay... took him enough years to decide that! :p ). So she can relate to part of what I'm going through but she's just angry clear through, she doesn't love him at all any more so she doesn't relate to that part of it, the whole mixed bag of emotions.
It would simplify things so much if I could turn off the love. I wish I could. It just means that a part of me is still so lost and utterly bewildered because there's still love, and that part keeps feeling guilty whenever I feel anger or hate. Which, admittedly, aren't good emotions to feel but they're at least understandable and uncomplicated. Hell, she's in town (she lives in Arizona) for a funeral and part of me feels guilty about not going to the funeral to be there for her, my ex and the dead man's wife. I don't know how to divorce my feelings from things like that. :( I had promised with my whole heart to love, honor, cherish, to be there for him in good times and bad, and because of his selfish choices I am forced to be forsworn of that promise.
My ex-mom-in-law is also very craft-y and she brought about 30 pairs of earrings that she'd made. She let me pick out the pair I liked best for my Christmas present. Though to a small, very petty part of me the best part of the present was that she said she was NOT making that same offer to Bitchface. ;p
She stayed for a few hours and we talked a lot, cried together, hugged a lot. She's still mystified (join the club) about what he did and said that he doesn't really talk to her. Which has to hurt her too because they used to be really close and talked all the time. She said that she always used to tell people that if there was one thing she knew it was that her son and I would be together forever, she was so sure of how he felt about me, that she'd never known him to be happier.
I don't even begin to know how to feel about that. :/ On one hand it hurt, of course, because he obviously changed at some point, keeping that change from both his mom and me. On the other hand it was reassuring on some level because someone else had felt the same way, saw the same thing. Because he lied for so long it's started to back-color everything for me and to cast doubt on everything so that I've been questioning whether any of it was ever real at all, whether he ever really loved me at all.
One of the hard parts of him divorcing me was losing not just the person I thought was my best friend (not to mention then going through all that pain/anger/depression/etc. without my best friend) but also losing my mom-in-law. Ever since my mom killed herself, I had gotten really close with my ex-mom-in-law so it felt sort of like also losing the only mom I had too. She's not gone I guess but... he's still her son. And she has to try to have some level of civility with her son's current choice of companion, even if she's not happy about it or happy with her son in general. She really doesn't like feeling like she has to choose between what she thinks is right and feeling like she has to support her son because he's her son.
On another family-related note, I managed to have a semi-civilized phone conversation with my dad on Christmas Day. That was only possible because I bit my tongue repeatedly. I wasn't sure I was even going to call him at all given something he'd said to me the last time I'd spoken with him. See, he got re-married. The first I knew about it was a call from him telling me he was going to be getting married sometime last spring and he'd let me know. I, of course, assumed it was going to be with the woman I knew he was dating. Yeah, not so much. He'd apparently broken up with her and gotten involved with someone else so the first time I even heard about the woman was him telling me he was marrying her. Yeah. And then he didn't actually bother to let me know when the wedding actually was which meant, in effect, he didn't invite me to the wedding. Again, charming. On the previous conversation he made the comment "Now that I have a real family" (ie. his new wife and her children and grandchildren). When I attempted to comment on that statement he just point blank ignored me. You can see why I'd need to bite my tongue in order to have a civilized conversation with such a person, right?
Sigh. The mess that my life has become continues apace, I suppose. ;p
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