But I'm gonna anyway.
Never fight when you're mad.
Never drink when you're mad.
Never, EVER blog when you're mad.
Instead? Wait a few hours until the hot fire of mad dulls down to icy rage, reconsider doing all of the above, sleep on it and mull it over a bit longer until the icy rage melts down to a sad understanding that you've been played, the same way you've been played for years by someone with control issues, and resolve that the last vestiges of the codependent crap you've continued to foster must - simply must - go.
If the last year or so has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that I can be my own person. I don't need permission to make decisions for myself. I don't need someone's approval or agreement to know when I'm doing the right thing. Yes, I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to make decisions I'll look back on someday and wonder which cues I missed, how I failed to see the outcome. That's my right as a human being, a right we all share. But I have children. Smalls who depend on me, and, the ripples I make when that decision hits the water overlap lives other than mine, so I'd better be careful and I'd better be right. And I'd better not make decisions in anger.
I know, this is cryptic. I'm sorry. One of the purposes of this blog is to provide a way for me to understand my own thoughts and feelings. Its serving that purpose right now, as the words flow from my brain to my fingers to the screen. I compose, I consider, I erase, rewrite, reword, rethink. I begin to understand. And after that's all said and done, people toss their comments in the mix, and those often give me yet more perspective.
Still, I have to be careful what I say here, in this public space. My words affect others, but most importantly my words have the ability to affect the two most important people in my life. Being angry with their father isn't a good enough reason to hurt my kids by writing unkind things about him here. But know that were I not restrained by those self-imposed rules, this post? Particularly if I'd written it yesterday? Searing epistle of rage.
I guess its human nature to think that we are different from everyone else. We are special. We often don't recognize when we excuse ourselves from the expectations we carefully thread around others. We all do it. I do it. And maybe we don't like it when people point it out to us. Who knows?
Another thing that is natural for people is the need to be heard, to be listened to. To have our feelings acknowledged. One of the biggest challenges of my life as a young girl was living with a father who was equally as emotional - maybe even more so - than I am. And my dad, when he would get upset at something, he'd go silent. I suspect now that he was burning, icy hot, and couldn't bring himself to talk about what was making him mad or didn't want to talk about it for fear of saying something he'd regret, but quiet he would go. And when he was mad at me, that quiet was unnerving. Nothing I did or said could make him talk to me about it until he was ready. That was his way of handling it - and his right to do so - but the residue of that within me is a sense of utter desperation when I need someone to hear and acknowledge me and they refuse. Its usually followed by blinding rage at being ignored.
Some people know that about me. And I think when they don't like something I've done, they use it against me. Or maybe I'm giving too much credit - maybe not acknowledging me is simply the way they handle conflict and its a simple accident of fate that I somehow managed to marry the one person who could evoke that helpless rage of my childhood. However, whatever. Somehow in my recovery the one lesson I still need to improve on is the ability to sense when I'm too emotional about something, when I need to let go of having expectations of others, when I need to release myself from the expectations others put on me, when I need to remember that nobody is responsible for how I feel and what I do but ME.
I'm deep in that right now, and its uncomfortable as hell.
I have some decisions to make. I can't make them lightly. They affect my kids too, and therefore every move I make must center around how to make a bad situation as good as it can possibly be FOR THEM.
And while I strive to protect them as much as I can, I still have to honor myself. I have to stand up for myself.
And so I type and read and erase and reword and backspace, go back and reread, and I ponder.
Its hard to understand how we go from the harmony and ease of the holidays to the current state, but here we are. One thing changed, I met someone, and I suspect that's the biggest factor affecting the events of the last few days. Never underestimate how hard it is for your ex to see you move on, even if they already started dating months ago.
