H came home and stayed for probably the longest period he has since BD. He spent the whole day with us. He was present and engaged throughout. Even stayed overnight. Didn’t rush to leave the next morning.
I had a plethora of mixed feelings. Relief. Happiness. Aloofness. Confusion. Anger. Resentment. Kept them all in check though.
Two notable things happened-
1. H muttered something really quick to me but I missed it. I heard something along the lines like “you don’t appreciate xxx” or “you’re unappreciative of xxx”....I said what? I can’t understand you when you mumble. He didn’t clarify further and just laughed it off and walked away. Afterwards I kept thinking about what in the world he could have possible accused me of being appreciative of.....and I got kind of mad at myself for letting that slide. I should’ve pressed it. That’s a 180 I really need to work on because I’ve always been a conflict avoider. And usually it takes awhile for a convo like that to hit me and then I think “hey! WTH was he talking about?” But by the time I have a retort it usually is too late. I wanted to say, what do you think I should be appreciative of? The fact that you walked away from our family? Or you disregarded the vows that you made? Or that you’ve become the pinnacle of everything you despise?
2. I gave S10 a scratch paper to work on math. And H saw the paper(which had old hotel booking info printed on there) and took it to me and said why am I receiving things like this about his trips. I said uh that’s really old, it’s from like two years ago. He said doesn’t matter, why am I getting this. I said because I BOOKED IT FOR YOU on my account. (He forgot he’d taken that trip) And just like above, I let it slide again!! Few mins later I was like wtf just happened? Was he trying to accuse me of keeping track of the details of his trips? Like I’m not supposed to see which hotels he’s staying at? What is he trying to hide from me??
Anyways. My conclusion is that I need to be more of a bada$$ b*tch than a make-nice conflict avoider. Hopefully I’m not just slow to be offended by things. Lol.
