That's funny, Bethie. I was just talking to my mom (getting her account of her visit with my S's, with W there), and I was telling her that I've come to notice that when W says something negative about me, it is really some fault that describes herself even more than it does me. I didn't use the term "projection", not at this time, but that's what I was describing to my mother nonetheless.
My mom did say one thing about my W during the visit. She said that it was obvious that W "has moved on". Moreover, W showed not one lick of shame or remorse, and was able to face my mother even in the full knowledge of her betrayal of her son -- like nothing at all was wrong.
It doesn't surprise me. It still makes me sad, yes, but it doesn't surprise me. That is exactly the same cold-blooded, shameless callousness that her own mother, the MIL, exhibited each time upon jettisoning three different husbands. Self-righteous determination that whatever's good for her is always just and fair for everyone concerned.
I don't want that kind of person around me, and I really don't want them around my sons either. Only because she is their mother will I have to tolerate her presence in our lives.
Well, it's time to blaze new trails and leave that soulless vampire to her own demise. When we touched on the subject, I told my mom that at this point, after a year of the pain and torture W has put me through, I can forgive W but I could never fully reconcile with her, not with this person she is now. Right now I am fighting the bitterness and hatred she has sown in my heart, and I am praying to Christ to help me through this angry harvest.
...
I have to say one other thing. I am feeling especially vulnerable right now. So please take the extreme emotions I am expressing in context with this. I am alone this weekend, and I am missing my sons, worrying about them so far away, in the constant presence of W and the MIL. I am jealous that I couldn't have been the one to take them to MS as I had originally planned. I am sore at my thankless employer for denying me the request to take vacation at this time. I am tired and overworked. I am facing the loss of the home I had worked so hard for my wife and my family, and I'm losing that wife and that family. And now my finances are faltering from a demotion at work, and the mounting costs of this failing economy. I need to find a new cheaper place to live and to move there. On top of that, my physician saw fit to renew all of my prescriptions except one, the AD's. So, I've been off the Prozac for more than a week now, after three years.
If I can survive the next month -- and, despite all this negativity, with God's help I don't see why not -- then I can survive anything.
