Unbearable Guilt That Isn’t Mine
My ex-husband’s wife had a stroke yesterday. She’s a year younger than I am. Mid-thirties is too young for a stroke.
I’m angry for her. I know what is happening to her right now. She’s in the hospital, she’s scared. Scared isn’t the word – she’s terrified.
I know what he’s doing. He’s sauntering around acting like things aren’t a big deal. He’s showing up and being caustic and sarcastic. He’s making comments about how much it’s going to cost him and how much of a fuss she’s causing. He’s acting like he doesn’t mean it, but she’s hurting because she’s JUST HAD A STROKE AND HE’S MAKING JOKES ABOUT IT!
He took a stranger up to her room today. She was crying because she didn’t know him and it scared her. He didn’t ask the guy to leave, he just let him hang around. Then he went to smoke with the guy for forty-five minutes.
Then while I’m having a nice rant about this, my mother told me that I shouldn’t tell my boyfriend things that would cause him to dislike my ex-husband.
She turned around and said, “I remember that time you cried all weekend because he took off and left you to go visit his old friends in his hometown right after y’all got married and wouldn’t wait for you to get off work.”
I really wanted to say, “Right, and then there was the time I was in the hospital because an ovarian cyst had ruptured, and he wouldn’t come see me because he said I WAS FAKING MY OVARY EXPLODING!
Then there were the times he forced me to have sex with him because I lived in ‘his house.’ Oh, and the time I said I was depressed and felt like dying, and he said I should go ahead and get that over with because he had things to do.”
All I really said was, “You know, he has to know what happened to me or he’s never going to understand why I’m COMPLETELY PSYCHO sometimes.”
Now I’m hanging out, not telling my boyfriend any of these things because, apparently, I can’t use my mouth to tell him things – I get a mental block with words because I’ll cry.
I’m so ashamed of myself for putting up with it, too. Plus, how do you tell the person you love that the person they accidentally introduced you to nearly fifteen years ago did all these things to you? Yep, my boyfriend introduced me to my ex-husband.
And there’s the part where someone I know just had a stroke, and I’m feeling sorry for myself. Oh, I’m feeling bad for her too; I have enough guilt and pity for the both of us!
I’m just going to lay here for a while and determine what feeling to feel next.