Too Many Shifts
I got an email last night which kept me up most of the rest of the night.
It was from my ex-husband. Well...sort of. With the stroke he suffered last April which demolished the left hemisphere of his brain, he still has trouble with language, judgement, impulse control and emotions, (ironic since I referred to him as Stoic pre-stroke) along with physical impairments to his right side. I think hatred fuels his recovery process, but that's just me.
No.
It's not.
It's more than me.
It's safe to assume that the angry litany of accusations and judgements fired off last night probably fuels a more general, collective hatred maintained by his family. This midwestern, taciturn, German farming stock of a family apparently and finally succumbed to their need for self expression since I know by the word choices and his mental limitations that this email's composition was a group effort. This email probably went through several drafts and fired its way back and forth through other inlaw email inboxes before it ever landed in mine.
And landed it did
like so much seagull crap across a windshield.
Iwas angry am angry.
The damn thing winged me.
Allowing it to wing me is infuriatingly frustrating.
What has continued to meet me in those tiny pieces of night where there is no sleep
or slivers of day driving in the truck somewhere
or maybe walking down the hall at school
when mental windtunnels suck a memory out of nowhere
is how much guilt I still feel.
For not leaving sooner.
For having the affairs.
For not standing up for myself.
For not being who Stoic wanted me to be.
For needing his family to accept me.
For not knowing who I was enough.
For not knowing I was enough.
For self destructing and checking out of the relationship.
For the embarrassing lack of grace and self respect.
For the loss of friendships and relationships because they couldn't sustain the damage my kind of frag pattern had.
For letting my kids down.
For a million things
and for those million things laid out so openly for collective examination and judgement.
I have days where I feel and think I'm brave enough to do the work
and the gentle, forgiving part of myself is taking care of business.
I'm all over it.
Then there are days when self examination is on the list right next to a barbed wire flogging
and the only one doing mental duty in my head is a sweaty, hairy lipped woman with no people skills and a penchant for listing every shortcoming I possess at a banshee-like volume in my head.
This better be true, dammit.
Hairy Lip is getting way too many shifts.
It was from my ex-husband. Well...sort of. With the stroke he suffered last April which demolished the left hemisphere of his brain, he still has trouble with language, judgement, impulse control and emotions, (ironic since I referred to him as Stoic pre-stroke) along with physical impairments to his right side. I think hatred fuels his recovery process, but that's just me.
No.
It's not.
It's more than me.
It's safe to assume that the angry litany of accusations and judgements fired off last night probably fuels a more general, collective hatred maintained by his family. This midwestern, taciturn, German farming stock of a family apparently and finally succumbed to their need for self expression since I know by the word choices and his mental limitations that this email's composition was a group effort. This email probably went through several drafts and fired its way back and forth through other inlaw email inboxes before it ever landed in mine.
And landed it did
like so much seagull crap across a windshield.
I
The damn thing winged me.
Allowing it to wing me is infuriatingly frustrating.
What has continued to meet me in those tiny pieces of night where there is no sleep
or slivers of day driving in the truck somewhere
or maybe walking down the hall at school
when mental windtunnels suck a memory out of nowhere
is how much guilt I still feel.
For not leaving sooner.
For having the affairs.
For not standing up for myself.
For not being who Stoic wanted me to be.
For needing his family to accept me.
For not knowing who I was enough.
For not knowing I was enough.
For self destructing and checking out of the relationship.
For the embarrassing lack of grace and self respect.
For the loss of friendships and relationships because they couldn't sustain the damage my kind of frag pattern had.
For letting my kids down.
For a million things
and for those million things laid out so openly for collective examination and judgement.
I have days where I feel and think I'm brave enough to do the work
and the gentle, forgiving part of myself is taking care of business.
I'm all over it.
Then there are days when self examination is on the list right next to a barbed wire flogging
and the only one doing mental duty in my head is a sweaty, hairy lipped woman with no people skills and a penchant for listing every shortcoming I possess at a banshee-like volume in my head.
This better be true, dammit.
Hairy Lip is getting way too many shifts.
Guilt is bullshit. What ever you did or didn't do falls directly on his doorstep. You did make some bad decisions, true. But you were driven to them because of his inattention and lace of drive and family activity. He was more concerned about what his poison family though and felt instead of listening to you. You can regret a few things, but not fee guilty about anything. The guilt is on him. And now, even more, on his family.
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