long past D thoughts

[forward]

As my post shows, I wound up being the one who remarried. I love new H and kids. I can say we have a very emotionally complicated situation due to various tragedies in his kids' lives, but we are doing well. I feel that a lot of that is due to H and I recognizing that this would hard. I am very happy that the kids seem to be growing in positive and healthy ways and we feel like a family now.

I do feel I went into this with eyes wide open. I knew, and still know, that this is the hardest thing and maybe the best thing I could do. I knew the kids would tell me "You're not my mom" at some point, and might hate me at times. I'm not going to say that I handle things great all the time, but having some sense of what this would be like does make a big difference. There is constant awkwardness. That is something I would tell anyone thinking of blending families. Just accept it and have a sense of humor about it. This is also the reason that I think MLC families that involve blending/kids would be 110% more difficult if not impossible. It's hard enough dynamic without throwing starry-eyed immature MLC into it.

Since New Woman ((#2) died, X doesn't seem much more mature in some ways. I don't see him often and don't really want to. I have basically stopped listening to his medical woes. This is going to sound harsh but the only reason I would care at all at this point is because of DD. I don't try to help him at all and don't really want to.

As far as I can tell, X doesn't have another woman in his life and seems to have very few friends. He does seem to have one friend, and I am grateful for that because I don't have to feel guilty if he needs help going forward. With his mom gone, X really doesn't have any family around on holidays. I found myself thinking about his mom and how I'd tell him that for the few times in a year that he saw her, he should be glad because his parents were aging and would not be there any more someday. Now here is that day.

I don't think I will ever get any more than that bungled apology from years ago and now I am at peace with that idea because I realized I don't even like him any more and find him a self-centered narcissistic person.

I was looking through pics of DD as a baby, around time that X left. And I found myself tearing up. I realized that that was a very, very hard time and I was very stressed out. I made it through and have a great life but it sure wasn't an easy time.