My friend 'K', whose W forced the sale of his house and pretty much made him homeless dropped by last night and stayed over.
He, like me, is a pretty giving and intuitive person and can look into someones eyes and see where they are really at emotionally.
Anyway, I had told him that I didn't mind him staying over sometimes but I was concerned that W would be worried because she had had some incidents as a child and was overly protective of the girls. He's cool with that and is a good guy.
This morning W was over doing the usual morning stuff with the girls and K got up and struck up a conversation with her. I was in bed still and she came into my room to tell me that D13 was sick. Then she says "K told me that you said I was concerned about him being here because of a childhood incident I had. I don't remember telling you that, I don't have an issue with him staying over".
I was a little angry and told her that I didn't say she was concerned, I said she _might_ be concerned and I didn't want to worry her. I also said that I felt he had no right to talk to her about what I said.
She said "Well I hope you weren't using that as an excuse to get him to not ask to stay over". I told her that was not the case.
So I got up in a few minutes and she was leaving. I talked to K and was initially angry but he told me that he was trying to feel her out because he had never really talked to her. Then he told me a little bit about their conversation.
He basically said that his impression was that she was a lost, scared and confused soul. At one point he was talking about how he was currently 'homeless' and she said "Yeah, I know what you mean because I'm homeless too". This was when they were standing outside on the front lawn of our house talking. He told me that it was all he could do not to say "Hello? You're homeless because of the choices you made" but he said to me that he really felt that she was too fragile and would break down if he said that. He did say that she was talking as if she was a victim.
We also talked about the fact that she had put up a few decorations this morning. I haven't talked to her about that but he was saying, as others have said, that I need to set strong boundaries from now on and that is an important start.
I agreed that I'm being wishy washy because I really don't want to let go. But, as he said, that keeps me stuck and I'm not able to grow.
K also suggested that I fill out the Divorce forms and tell her that I have them ready. Not as a 'strategy' but as a symbolic gesture of moving forward. My marriage is over and she's lost.
Grandma says so. Her dad says so. Her brother. All my friends.
I've been walking on eggshells still. It's eating me alive. And hurting my work.
So, letting her go and moving on is hard. Setting firm boundaries is hard because I don't want to hurt her. But I need to love me.
She's really a good person inside. I know she seems happy but I also know she is in pain and I can't fix it for her. And holding on hurts me, which means it hurts my girls.
