I've Got to Let Go of This

I still find myself on a roller coaster of emotions. I am so angry with Uber-Bitch that I want to lash out and make her hurt as badly as she hurt me. I want to cry and hide in a dark room under the covers and pretend none of this ever happened. I want to dance on the tables from the joy of having so much of my life and my time back. I want to shake her and go through her blog line by line with her to show her how totally fucked up she is and how she is reaping what she sowed. I want to crawl under a rock and apologize to everyone I know for not believing them all these years when they told me what an Uber-Bitch she is and rewind the tape to erase all the MANY MANY MANY times I defended her, even after I had stopped believing it myself.

But it all comes down to the fact that I really need to let the situation go. I still obsess over the inaccuracies in her blog. I still plan in my head what I would say to her if I could get her to listen. I have nightmares about her. Almost everything I do these days reminds me of her betrayal. And it still feels like a knife in the back.

Does she know that she has reinforced most of my basic fears?

My biggest fear is that people are saying cruel (but often true) things behind my back and I don't know it until it comes crashing down around me. It happened.

I hate conflict because I am always worried the person will get so mad that the relationship will be destroyed in an ugly showdown. It happened.

I feel like a bad person because I am selfish and lazy. She said that I am.

I feel like a bad parent because I struggle with follow-through. She attacked my parenting skills.

I felt guilty for expecting her to become part of the family with all the goods and bads that come with it. She says I did it all for myself, to make myself feel better.

I make a point of never lying to people. She has decided I was lying the whole time.

Ever since she moved up here, I have felt she is my responsibility. (The whole "if you save a life, it is your responsibility to protect it" ideology.) And she accused me of deliberately sabotaging her at the worst possible time.

I refuse to keep score of the things I do for others compared to what they do for me. I can't bear the thought of it becoming a "You owe me!" situation. She tallied it all up on her mental scoreboard. (Even distorted beyond any resemblance of the truth, she was still keeping score.)

I hurt so bad. I know this is all my fault. I picked up the snake and brought it home and now it has bitten not just me but my family. The Shrink said it was her choice to bite the hand that fed her. He says she could have made a different choice, like the lion in the fable of the lion and the mouse, or Alex in Madagascar. But I cannot get the story of the woman and the poisonous snake out of my mind: "I am a poisonous snake. You knew this when you picked me up. What did you think I would do?"

How could I have let it come to this??? And how do I break myself out of this pain?