Working on acceptance and forgiveness

[AntoniaB]

Yeah I realize that the MLC lens might be distorting things.

This won't drive a wedge between my sister and I. I probably won't even bring it up to her. Likely my mom will contact her and say I know. But that will be the end of it.

What the situation (or at least my mom) did reveal to me is that they are not understanding recovery from something like this. Around T-giving, they saw me being very peaceful and trying to work with acceptance and forgiveness. The main reason I felt I was getting there was that the limited interactions I had with H were not contentious anymore. They were cordial, even joking around at times. Then he started to get comfy and made friendship gestures. I wasn't ok with that, so I backed off. The problem is that they assumed (mom says) that he wouldn't accept that I was backing off. So my sister contacted him to tell him to walk away. Mom said "we just didn't want him to hurt you again." But they can't control him. I can't control him. He can hurt me if I let him. I recognized that, and I cut off the cake-eating. I felt good about that decision and I felt that I had some control over myself in the situation.

This whole experience has been about me trying to learn to stand on my own. I found it empowering that in a week, I saw his friendship gesture, I felt pulled to it, but then in talking to you guys and others, I saw that it wasn't good, and I walked away.

To find out that she didn't have faith in this process and went the extra mile by contactng him shows me that my family is willing to go to a lot of lengths to try to minimize further damage, and that's admirable. But I told my mom, you have to stop doing that. You can't minimize it. And if you minimize it, you strip me of the experience of facing bad stuff and overcoming it. I have to learn to overcome, not be shielded from bad stuff. He shielded me all our marriage to the point that I couldn't function when he left me. When he left, my father said, "don't worry, you don't need him to care for you. We can take care of you."

Where is the "you can take care of yourself" message? Look it's wonderful that I have a supportive family, but they made me into a codependent person, he made me into one, and for 41 years, I've been codependent. Well, codependent no more!! :-)

My family's reaction to me is twofold: protect her from anything else bad if possible, and worry incessantly if she isn't progressing every day and if she has even the most minor "down" day. My therapist describes the way my family treats me as "Antonia on a pedestal." "Revere her accomplishments. Protect her from harm. If she falls, panic. Get her back on that pedestal as fast as possible."

I told mom you guys have got to back off and let me navigate this. I KNOW YOU MEAN WELL. But this is the 10th time at least that I've felt this way about the way they're taking over for him in terms of how they treat me, and it's counterproductive.

As a side note, this morning at the vet's office I had an epiphany, that I was finally "ok with not being in a relationship." That I would "stop worrying about being alone because I was doing great." Isn't that ironic?