I had planned to blog about my wonderful vacation complete with pictures. I even bought a cell phone with a camera to make sure that I could accomplish it. My plan started to unravel on the road to Morehead City when I suddenly realized that it may well be that it was the last time that I'd be going there. That, in fact, the time was running short on having a reason to have anything at all to do with my ex-husband. My daughter will soon be grown and won't need me to facilitate contact with her father. As much as I don't want it too, this made me terribly sad. So with the emotional stage set, I started my vacation.
Ex arranged for me to have a free room at the hotel that he works at during my visit. The hotel is beautiful and probably one of the most comfortable places that I have ever stayed. It was just what I needed. And as emotionally complicated as this idea is, it was just what I didn't need. Arriving under the cloud that my days of contact with my ex were coming to an end, I was also having trouble with the feelings again of having been cheated by my divorce and the circumstances that caused it out of the comfort of being married. Staying there just amplified those feelings.
There are people who have known my ex husband and I for years who don't know that we are divorced. One of the reasons for this is that the woman that ex left me for hides behind her mental illness to excuse herself from life. I do not have to worry about running into her at any reunion or family event, simply because she does not go to them. More often than not, ex and I go together to these things. But is not only family events that she shirks, the trip brought out to me the devastating depth of responsibility she shirks by clinging to her illness. Lizzie and her boyfriend stayed with ex and his wife. Early in the week it became clear that Joanne was in her room sick. She did not even make the effort to go out and introduce herself to her house guests. In a whole week, the kids did not see her one time, and they were staying in her house, and she was there. One night during the the week the kids and ex went into a nearby town to have dinner with her children, and she did not go. She wraps her illness around her like a blanket and uses it as a shield to defend herself from having any responsibility to anyone. She is totally self centered and self absorbed. She accomodates no ones needs but her own. So one evening while I was out eating I was watching a very old and feeble couple. The husband was the weaker of the two, and the wife did all that she could to accomodate him so that he was able to attend a family dinner out. While I was watching them, I wondered to myself "when ex is as old and feeble as this man, who will help him?" All of ex's grandparents lived into their 90's and they all had severe health problems as they grew older. The same seems to be true with his parents. It is not unreasonable to think that that will be the case with ex. Joanne will not reach out of herself long enough to be the person to care for him when he is old. That insulted me and made me angry. This woman went out of her way to rob me of my life, yet she doesn't care enough about it to live in it. She refuses to become a part of the family. I know nothing of the relationship that she has with ex, but she steadfastly refuses to have a relationship with anyone else, including her own children.
In the week since my vacation, I have been plagued with struggling with these feelings. On one side I have the mandates to not judge others and to forgive as Jesus forgives. On the other hand, I have the absolute assurance that this woman is pure selfishness. I hear in my head "no one is pure evil, everyone has the spark of God" and I counter with "Yes, I hear that Hitler was charming."
Tonight, or I guess by the hour it is, last night Lizzie received a text from her father that he was in the Emergency Room. Because we were at a noisy party and she was separated from me, she forwarded the text to me. I called and found out that he is very ill with pneumonia and a blood clot in his lung. He took himself to the ER because she is too ill to drive. He is alone there even after he has spent many many hours there with her and her self inflicted wounds. He is alone because he left a family, people who wanted then and still desire to have a relationship with him to marry and live with a woman who is so utterly selfish she can't be expected to have a relationship with anyone. I am terribly concerned about him. Lizzie asked me, in tears, if he was going to die. Matt wanted to go up there, and Matt is recovering from surgery himself. Even now, I would go and take care of him. But Joanne won't. She claims that she can't.
There is a deep wounding part of this that injures me everytime I allow the thought to surface. She, in her total selfishness is loveable, and I am not.
