No Time for This

Just working out the anger before I go to bed so I have happy dreams instead of angry dreams. This is modified from a free-flowing e-mail to my best friend who has been through so much with me in the past 2 years!
I had another one of those conversations tonight with someone saying how amazed and proud she was of how quickly I landed a good job after being laid off.

This is all very interesting and puzzling to me. Maybe it's because I have the support of good friends and because I feel more mentally healthy than the average "Jane" but to me it just seems like what you DO.

Now that I think about it, though, it would only seem like an accomplishment to your average person. To your average "Driver" (stereotypical Type A) you just figure out what you need to do and then you do it. Even though I suffer from the same self-doubts as anyone else, I also believe that I am a good and capable person and would do a good job at any place that I decided I wanted to work.

It also helps that I seem to have the ability to somehow detach from things that are traumatic. I'm not saying I didn't have to work through the feelings of low self-worth that are common with a lay-off but they, generally, didn't cause me too much despair (other than when I let my former husband momentarily cause me to doubt myself).

It reminded me of 9/11. I think I told you about how I was able to watch it all unfold on TV and not feel, at all, the same impact that it had on everyone else. I had work to do. I was having a baby any day (8 days later as it turned out and I think this was a big part of my ability to detach). There was a huge bike event that weekend and I had to finish the arrangements for our booth. I remember being frustrated that no one seemed to be working that afternoon. My attitude was, "The world goes on. Bad things happen. We can't shut down because something bad happen." Heck I should have been Bush's spokesperson - "Everyone go on with your business and keep spending (money you don't have)"! To me it didn't seem that much different than the terrible things that happen all over the world every minute of every day - I just knew from all my reading of sad memoirs that American had been sheltered until that point. I remember feeling, "Look - we all still have to get up tomorrow morning. We have to eat. We have to go to work." And I'm about to bring a child into this world and I am NOT going to process this on any level.

It's like I figure there is no TIME for wallowing in grief.

Maybe, too, this is why when there are times when I feel I do need to grieve that I have historically wanted to flee and be by myself? It feels shameful for me to allow myself to "go there" and grieve? And maybe I worry that if I grieve I will get angry which I already have recently discovered I like to avoid as an experience?

But as I type I think, I am not an "angry" person - I don't get mad about little things. The things I get angry about might actually be useful anger - like when you get angry at someone for passing out with your kids in their care? Or angry at being treated unfairly? Or angry at injustices in the world?

Well, aren't I just a wealth of words tonight?? I'm not even sure if they are coherent at this point! Hopefully you will be able to pick up what I'm setting down because it is actually making a lot of connections in my brain.

I've stayed up WAY too late tonight!

J~

Dear Former Husband

I am writing to you here because it would be pointless to try to communicate these things to you in real life. Were you a rational person I might give it a go but, having tried so many times for so many years, I already know that you reside on a different planet and there is no space shuttle that could seem to bridge the gap!

First of all...I am still probably really mad at you but I haven't allowed myself to "go there" because, again, what would be the point? I am SO incredibly happy to be free of you, your rules, and your judgments that I have figured why dwell on the past?

Yet I still have to deal with you now because of the kids and I have, and will continue to, be positive with them about how much their Daddy loves them and validate their love for you.

My therapist tells me the reason why I have dreams where I'm really angry at you is because I AM but because I refuse to acknowledge this while I'm awake it has to come out somehow.

So...now is my chance to tell you a few things...
The funny thing is that even though you've been sober for around 18 months - you're still the same manipulative, bitter person you always were. Everyone else is screwing you and taking advantage of you. You are smarter than everyone else. Your rules are better than how everyone else does things. Everyone else is stupid and should be punished if they don't follow your rules or EVEN WORSE if you have to do something you don't want to do.

I think the point I'm trying to make here is that, YES I am angry. I don't like you. Your opinions of me are unwelcome and unacceptable.

I will continue to keep to myself all of the terrible things you did and not bring them up with you, nor share them with your supporters (Mom and Dad and the fiance). Believe it or not, even your friends can see through you. They think it's really strange that you became engaged to and moved into your daughter's Kindergarten teacher's house within 2 months of your first date. Did you bother to tell your fiance or your parents WHY YOU HAD ONLY ONE overnight/week in the Parenting Plan? It's not because I'm a bitch - it's because you passed out repeatedly while they were in your care and because you were emotionally abusive to them while drinking (remember the line about how you were going to "grab my cat by his fucking tail and slam his skull into the concrete?" - did you share that one with your fiance and her two cats).

People have known your business was going to fail from the minute I was out of the picture and you opened up in the most expensive location in town with no real plan other than to "sell a lot".

Even though you continue to minimize what I did for your business, your clients, your friends, your family all know that it was ME and my skills that made your business what it was. Without me you would have been some guy wrenching in his garage. You telling me that the things on my resume were "overstated" and that they were "between me and my employer" hurt me alot. Again. But I have been working on it, figuring out why it was I still thought that I would get approval from you or why I needed it. I guess maybe it would have been some sort of apology to hear that you valued what I had done? Silly, huh?

Speaking of which, can I also mention that everyone who hears that you kept my bike thinks it is about the shittiest thing? They don't know the half of it!

Let's see...what else is there...I know there must be more inside...

Oh, yeah, your suicide note to me...the one that you saved somewhere and kept secret from me for 5 years - only to give it to me with a fresh addendum as our divorce unfolded. You remember that one? The one titled "The Top 10 Reasons to Blow My Fucking Head Off" - I've mentioned in there a few times.

In turns out I was the #1 reason. And, of course, let's not forget the line - "Hope finding my headless corpse doesn't fuck you up too bad, bitch!"

Maybe it would have fucked me up less than spending the next 5 years of my life living with someone who:
*  Resumed drinking, drank to the point of blacking/passing out EVERY SINGLE NIGHT (kind of hard to feel like having sex with someone who was laying on the carpet with drool running out of his mouth the night before)
*  Had me cowering in fear that his anger was going to snap at some point and he was going to stab me (for some reason I always thought that's what it would be).

You're really quite a winner!

Do you remember when we first worked together? You were always so sarcastic that I asked one day, "Do you hate me or are you always like this?" - well it turns out after 15 years it was both! You did hate me and you are always like that. Of course, at 20 years old I thought, "Gee. This guy acts like he hates me but says he doesn't. I think I should marry him!" Guess I'm not so smart either.

Let me flip through my mental rolodex here - we had had a lot of years together...I know there are other things I am angry about.


Oh yeah, you telling me a year before the divorce finally happened that even the first year we were married that you used to stay late at work because you dreaded coming home to me. Why didn't you just leave then? I was 22! I could have done something totally different with my life other than giving you my inheritance and sacrificing my career for your business and subjecting myself to emotional abuse.


Other "deal breakers" other than those listed above (passing out with the kids in your care being a big one)...
The big scene you caused in front of the kids when I asked you to spend the night at a friends house because when I asked you, "Would you ever hurt me?" you replied, "Why would I fuck up my life like that?". Remember that one, where the kids and I were crying, you almost pulled my arm out of its' socket, and then you drove off so drunk you were about to pass out after threatening to drive yourself into the reservoir? Yeah, that was a deal breaker.


And the funny thing is that this happened a full year before the divorce. I called your Dad and your Sister and all your friends. I finally had to tell them you had been drinking about 16 drinks every night and that you had been suicidal for a long time. I thought they would help you. And us. But they couldn't. And they don't seem to remember this now - and of course, anyway, you were only like that because I was such a horrible bitch.

Well...I'm getting really tired of writing this. It's all pretty boring to me now. I've been thinking about and/or supressing all of this stuff for so long and I'm really not interested in continuing to let it bother me.

As I said, Former Husband, your opinions and judgments of me are unwelcome. I choose to air your "dirty laundry" here because only 4 people who also know you even know of the existence of this blog. Everyone else in your life will eventually figure you out and see you for who you are, as will your children, I don't need to help them get to that point by telling them what you did to me.

Signed,
Your Former Wife Who Quit Trying to Please You 2 Years Ago but Who Should have Quit Trying 15 Years Ago.