I'm actually tired of being mad at H. I'm a little mad at myself for putting up with his dismissive and belittling behavior all of these years, and then I'm proud of myself for being strong enough to keep my sense of self all of these years. I've known for a long time that most of this comes from him feeling bad about himself and that he can't admit that he has a problem. Thing is, I can't live with that anymore. It has never been my fault or my problem and I don't want to keep making myself responsible for it.
I was talking with my cousin the other day about something else and she observed that I don't put up with people's bull. When someone comes in and tries to derail an issue or distract people from the real problem, I'm inclined to keep redirecting back to the things that really matter. I started thinking about all of the whacky people I have in my life (H isn't the only one) and realized that the ones I can tolerate are the ones who can own their crazy. I have a couple of relatives who are always being self-righteous and acting like they're perfect and anything that goes wrong in their lives is not due to anything he did. They really believe that they are victims of the world, and I don't like being around them, because they believe their own bull and weigh everyone around them down with it. Temper tantrums run strong in my family and I'm even prone to them, and I can forgive almost anything that is said during a rant so long as the person recognizes later that they were out of line and acknowledges it. That's where I can't forgive H. I listed a few of the really outrageous abuses against me in a previous post, and of those I'd say I received an apology for less than twenty percent of them. In fact, most of them went unacknowledged. That's not even counting the dozens of daily (over ten years) dismissals and critiques. Consider someone taking your head off over something imaginary like buying wiper fluid without supervision and not receiving an apology later, because that a) never happened or b) was perfectly justified. I truly think that screwing with someone's head like that is the worst thing a person can do to another. H has been doing this stuff for years, and I can't imagine how I ever trusted him.
