Only One Person to Blame

The deluge of hateful diatribes continues as Uber-Bitch has narrowed her focus of blame. She says,

I no longer hate the world because I realize there's only one person to blame for this. I wish I could say it were me - then maybe the blame wouldn't be so huge. But I blame her for lying, for not communicating, for avoiding conflict in her typical fashion, for breaking her promises to tell me if something were wrong. I blame her completely for having a perception of reality so fucked up no one can make sense of it.

She has also decided that I did all of this to her intentionally out of spite caused from intense jealousy. Apparently I am jealous her life. She says,

Did it start with the supposed freedom of me being able to go to California and expand from there? It seems to horrible to think that but jealousy does crazy things to people. Here she is, stuck in this life she's miserable in, feeling without any control, and I'm right there in her living room, pursuing my dreams. Does she resent me as a result? For having the life she can't have?
[snip]
If even half of what I've guessed is correct, it would explain why she would feel like sabotaging me. As M has explained to me in the past, people will try to bring you back to their level if you try to surpass them (or something like that). It would also explain why there's no way in hell she'd ever admit to it and would need psychologically to change her reality to suit herself. It takes a really big person to admit when you're jealous of someone else.

Again the knife is twisted, just when I thought I could breathe again. The things she says that are complete rubbish hurt but they don't devastate. The most effective way to devastate me is to take the truth and twist it and corrupt it into something vile and corrosive then offer it up to me as reality. Because I recognize the kernel of truth, I will believe it all. Like a fish taking the hook with the worm, I will swallow the whole deal and it takes ripping my insides out to see the truth uncorrupted.

The most notable example of this is from my early childhood. These two statements were drilled into me: First off, we all have to do things we don't like. Secondly, when someone does something for you, you owe them something in return. And these things are true to a point so if I ever questioned them I received confirmation of their veracity. But those truths were corrupted, twisted, manipulated into justification for things no child should experience. And I swallowed it all as gospel truth. To this day I believe that those things happened because I made them happen.

Now I am faced with a piece of truth: Uber-Bitch has accused me sabotaging her out of jealousy, jealousy over her doing what I wished I could. And I was jealous. I did harbor some resentment towards her. Certainly not enough to sabotage her and it is laughable to think that I would generate this situation out of overt or suppressed jealousy. But it was there and I was aware of it.

After 13 years of waiting, planning and trying, I finally set it up and arranged to go back to school in the fall. I was over the moon with excitement, a little bummed at having to wait until fall, but genuinely excited. And the Uber-Bitch decided she wanted to go back to school, too. She figured that now was the best time because she did have room and board covered and she couldn't work her business any harder than she was. The benefits of going back to school and possibly getting her degree (which she subsequently upgraded to definitely getting her degree) outweighed the drawbacks, namely all the extra time she would need and the student loans she would rack up. Not only did she decide to go back, she found she could take out loans and make it happen right away.

Because I had decided to go back to school, so did she. Except she would be doing it "better" because she could do what I couldn't. Until she got daycare arranged, I also felt like we were having to pick up the slack from her following my dream. Even after day care was set up, it seemed like she was spending a lot less time on her business and that the only time she wanted to be around her daughter was when she was experimenting with things she learned in her parenting class. But what set the resentment level to "grinding teeth" was when she began judging my parenting skills based on her class and deciding she knew everything and I was doing it all wrong. Regardless of whether she was right (and she prolly was) I felt attacked by her judgments and by her going back to school before me (which felt like a passive-aggressive method of showing me up).

Was I jealous? Yes. Did I resent her? Yes. Did I refuse to admit it because I am weak and mentally fragile? No. I talked it over with two or three different people, decided I was being unreasonable and that she did not mean any of it as an attack. And I set it aside, sometimes gritting my teeth at her newfound "parenting skills" but always supporting and encouraging her. Did I sabotage her because of the green-eyed monster? No. I was proud of her for doing what she thought was the best way to make a life for her and her daughter and for trying her best to learn and apply better parenting skills.

So it comes down to this, reading how she is blaming me and me alone for ruining her life by sabotaging it because I am so jealous of her succeeding. I know that I didn't sabotage her. But I was jealous and resentful. What if I sabotaged her subconsciously? What if the reason I let her escalate a minor spat into irreparable harm was because, subconsciously, I wanted to get rid of her?

This whole disaster came about because she thought I was suddenly kicking her out over an issue she didn't know existed. She has pushed, pulled, and twisted things to where she thinks I wanted to kick her out for a long time and hid behind the doctor to finally make it happen. She thought it was because I felt used and that the relationship was one-sided and has since decided it's because I'm blinded by jealousy over "freedom" that I perceive her as having and me as lacking.

But none of that was ever my intention. I was trying to tell her that, because of irreconcilable differences between her and Kid-1, I wanted her to start actively trying to find somewhere else to live. Up until the Med-Shrink ordered me to get her out of the house in 1 week or less, I wanted her and her daughter there. It actually made it easier for both of us - less juggling of evening schedules - for them to be here.

And I hadn't stopped being her friend because I wasn't doing things with her. I fall apart from Easter through mid-June and it's a struggle to keep myself alive - I didn't have the energy for her drama let alone with the added resentment I felt. Given time, it would have resolved itself. By the end of June her parenting class would have been over and my dark spell would have passed. But she needed attention immediately and I couldn't give it to her.

As for her friend and her therapist saying I have gone off the deep end, I have to infer that is a direct result of what information she gave them. When I downgraded her household status to "guest" (admittedly because I was hurt from reading that she had no more interest in fixing our relationship), she interpreted it as my saying I wanted her out because she didn't do enough. She posted her huge laundry list of things that she "tried" to do (her justification of why the relationship wasn't one-sided and if it was it's all my fault) and while most of them are exaggerated or complete BS, some of them are flat-out true. (I don't do the amount of housework that I should.)

My instinct is to go through her posts, especially that list, and defend myself even though I know there is absolutely no point. But when it comes right down to it, she had missed the heart of it all, she hadn't understood a single thing about what it is to be a family or to be part of a family. The fact that she even kept a running tally is evidence of her not learning a thing from us trying to include her as one of the family. Because of her background, she is too damaged to understand the concepts and too ego-centric to know she even missed the boat.

As the vitriol continues and grows ever crueler, I have asked myself why I still read it. The answer is that the slings and arrows she launches at me are far less painful than not knowing what she is accusing me of. She knows me well enough to have plunged her knife into all of my weaknesses but at least with them out in the open I can point them out to friends and family and dissect the validity of them, thereby seeping much of the power from them. It also gives me tangible proof that I am not paranoid for fearing she thinks these things.

One surprise unintended consequence of this fiasco... my friends and family have rallied behind me and gone out of their way to show their support. I haven't given the kids details because I don't want them to have to choose sides but aside from them whose opinion I don't have, every single person I know has said that I am in the right, that I did the right thing, and that they are proud of me. All sorts of stories about things she has done are surfacing that, while extremely painful, reinforce that this break is in the best interests of me and my family. Because of their support, I am more confident in my overall position (though I readily admit to the things I screwed up as well).

I am the one, singular person to blame here? Not by a long shot. But if we are weighing this out to cast blame, her mis-deeds and misperceptions are far greater and far deeper than mine. It's a shame she will never see any of that - she doesn't have the opportunity to learn valuable lessons from this. She will be reinforcing her victim mentality and putting herself on a high pedestal while I have learned a lot about rescuing vs helping, enabling, communication skills and fighting fair. It truly is her loss all the around.