This weekend has turned out to be pretty much negative. The W and I had another disagreement last night. She's already upset with me for S6 being sick (like I wanted S6 to get sick, even if it is not in my power to make it happen.) She's the RN so she was particularly mad I didn't consult with her before trying to get him some medicine for his stomach. (I can't win.)
Among all the many, many other reasons she stays perpetually angry and distrustful of me, it was the fact that I did not tell her what was going on with my mother that has her upset now.
My poor mom. She just sold her home to move in with my youngest brother in an apartment. She's been through a lot in the last few years and she was tired of maintaining her own home, so she sold her house and took the remaining equity and put it into her retirement. She's leased a new apartment along with my "kid" brother until the both of them can make some longer term decisions about each of their lives.
She had completed her move only this past Friday, and yesterday the entire apartment complex burned down. The both of them lost everything. I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon trying to coordinate information with my other brother, his wife and my mother and youngest brother.
I finally told W last night when calling at the S's bedtime. She got upset at me for all the stupid inconsiderate things I've been doing of late, including not telling her about this.
I apologized saying that she has been misjudging me of late and that I should not have misjudged her. But she has shown no interest in talking with my family. They had accepted W fully into the family when we married and have come to love her dearly. But since the bomb she has never returned their calls and refuses to talk to them. It is one thing if she has a beef with me, but they (my side of the family) did nothing to deserve this cold, callous treatment from her. So I apologized, but I had assumed she really didn't care.
W called me back later (I'm in the gym working out and should have not taken her call) telling me that I needed to gather all of the digital photos together that I had and to print them all out for my mother. She even offered to put them into an album and she would mail them to my mom for me. Then she told me to tell my mother how sorry she was for this tragedy.
Maybe I shouldn't have gotten angry with W, but it rubbed me the wrong way. She was again bossing me around, telling me what I needed to do -- after she had abdicated that role in my life (it was a role I should never have granted her very controlling nature in the first place.) I thanked her for her suggestions, but I told her I resented the fact that she still thinks that I am still too unfeeling and inconsiderate enough to come up with these thoughtful gestures on my own. In fact my brother, his W and I were already in plans to gather all the photos we could among ourselves and the extended family. I thanked her for the album suggestion, and I would take care of that. As for passing along condolences from W to my mother, I told W that if she was truly concerned for my mother and my family, why doesn't she just call them herself?
She said, "I can't do that." I paused and said, "fine."
She also asked about my C session that afternoon, particularly the part about Hosea. I told her that the C meant the passage to have bearing on my situation and not hers. It is a story about humility, compassion and forgiveness. What I gather from the C is that I need to realize that W is going to do what she's going to do, she's made her choice, and that like Hosea with his W and , by the analogy, God and the Israelites, I have to let the person I love fall, make their mistakes, let them suffer for their choices, and be forgiving of them when (or if) they come to their senses and seek forgiveness. W continues to resist this analogy, saying she will never come back, and that it is over between us. She says that I refuse to accept her decisions -- she "knows" that I will never accept that the marriage is dead.
I told her I agreed the marriage was now dead, and that the only way to resurrect it would have been to start over anew, with a new relationship together, but she has not only been unwilling to even try, but has actually been attempting to undermine any such possibility. As long as someone else was in the picture there was no chance she would ever attempt to see any other possibilities.
She got a call from someone else at that point (at nearly 11 PM at night) and said she'd have to call me back a little later to continue the conversation. Hurt, (because I knew of only one other person who would be calling her so late at night) I calmly said, "What would be the point? You've already told me there is nothing I can say to you to change your feelings. And I know that. So,... good bye."
Yes, this was another backslide. A very deep backslide back into the pit. It now sets the stage for for going dark on a very sour note. Unlike W, I have a difficult time not being open and honest. I cannot easily fake my thoughts and feelings; it's so against my nature. The best I have ever been to do was to clam up, hide in my shell, and not say anything. But I know that only makes me angry, bottling it up like that. I've got a lot of growing yet to do. I'm not there yet. Unfortunately, I see that my lack of progress in this area is killing any chance I might have had to help my W.
