Today she revisited the age-old theme of "my ex-best friend kicked me out at the worst possible time" and how I turned on her and how I ruined her life. She went off about the doctors that said she needed to go. She reminded herself that she did no wrong and I am Satan-Spawn who destroyed her trust forever more. She is so far gone away from reality that she clings to her assertion that I kicked her out abruptly for the main purpose of sabotaging her.
Does she honestly not remember that conversation? The one where I explicitly and directly said that although the Med-Shrink wanted me to boot her without notice, that I would never do that and that The Shrink and I had discussed it and didn't think immediacy was needed or appropriate. I asked her to START LOOKING for somewhere. She got defensive immediately and informed/reminded me that she had tried to leave and I "wouldn't let her" and that we had shot her down when she wanted to. She was referring to the time when she was thinking about moving into the projects and Hubby and my's immediate reaction questioning the safety and suitability of such a place. I, in return, got defensive as well - that she chose to blame me for discouraging her from taking that route back when it was originally presented. I told her that maybe it was time for her to revisit that option.
Then she screwed up: she chose to attack the personality and integrity of Kid-1. Did she expected me to "side" with her and change my mind because my son has issues? I had tried to make it very clear that I wasn't blaming either of them exclusively for their irreconcilable differences but that it just wasn't working any more. And yet she tried to air her laundry list assassinating Kid-1's character and expected me to sit there and take it. True or not makes no difference, I am not going to listen to her trash him at a time that it serves no purpose. It didn't matter what she did or what he did; she had to start looking at other options. So I cut her off. I told her that I wasn't going to discuss it with her and that this wasn't up for debate. She got pissed because I wouldn't let her "express her opinion" and stomped off.
Even after that, I had no intention of starting a war. I was all set to apologize the next day for the direction the conversation had taken. I recognized that I had gotten defensive about her blaming me (again). But she was still in Uber-Bitch mode. She was trying to get ready for school and I was trying to get the kids around so I didn't push it. Then came the curt emails which I tried to respond to with no animosity or tenor of attack. Her response tipped the scales - I had been considering whether or not I should read her blog to get her side of it. So I did.
Wow! The venom she had begun pouring out shocked and stunned me. Still I supported her. I tried to find a way to repair things. I was hurt and angry at what I read. But in her defense, she didn't know that I was going to start reading again (despite specifically asking me a week or so before). So I sat on it and tried to hold my tongue - I neither needed nor desired a confrontation. But it didn't take long before I reached my tolerance level. When she proclaimed on her blog that she could never trust me again and that she would no longer put anything into our relationship, I lost it.
That is when I gave up on her. That is when I stopped thinking of her as a sister. That is when I made the catty remark about guests not cleaning - and she's right: I said it for the shock value and as subtle attack. She lost her position in our family, in our household, not because of a longstanding issue that I had never bothered to bring up but because she decided she didn't want to be close to me.
She accused me many times of harboring negative feelings against her that I didn't express until I kicked her out. But the fact is, I didn't have a problem with her staying there and I didn't expect her to be doing anything different than what she had been doing. I knew very well that the relationship was lop-sided but every time I tried to expect more out of her, she fell down and I ended up angry. So I dropped my expectations and I required nothing more from her than what she was giving. As for the conflict between her and Kid-1, I didn't blindside her with that either - we had been talking about it all along, as problems arose.
Uber-Bitch has gone through many variations on a theme in her blaming me for her issues. She went through a phase where she was convinced I was jealous of her because she was living out her dreams and I was stuck in hell therefore I sabotaged her to bring her down to my level. She went through a period of blaming Kid-1 for everything. She decided that I had never been her friend and had done everything I did for her to make myself feel better. (I never did understand that one...) She blamed me for her math grades as if it's my fault she incompetent at math. She went out of her way to spite me during the move, first by changing her mind about the desk (AFTER I had promised it to Kid-3 because she said she didn't want it) and then by purposefully refusing to take her mattress and box springs despite me giving her plenty of notice that she needed to do so. (And when I blew my top over her passive-aggressive attack, she filed a police report against ME - that was funny!!)
The odd thing about all the garbage she has been spewing is that it is largely the same things I have been saying/thinking about her. This bothered me quite a bit: what's to say she's not right and I am the one that is blind. But after going over and over the situation in my mind and with anyone who would listen, after sending many people to her blog to get her point of view, after discussing it endlessly with my two best advisors (Guardian Angel and The Shrink), I came to the conclusion that she is projecting her short-comings onto me so strongly that she truly can't see they are her own.
Here is some of today's antics:
Sometimes this world we live in really makes me shake my head in bewilderment. We hurt each other all the time. Why? What makes us do that? What makes a doctor think, in spite of the Hippocratic oath (do no harm) that kicking someone out for no good damn reason is okay? What kind of human beings are these people? Where do they come from? The relationship itself was wrong and I knew that. I was going to fix it in time but on my terms. I was simply going to let the relationship take it's natural course after I left and let it fade. It would have been less painful that way. And I ask how I possibly could have overreacted? A woman you've known and treasured for 12 years suddenly turns on you - how do you react? When your future hangs in the balance, could you react calmly? Or would you panic? Would you be pissed at having trusted this person implicitly only to realize too late that you shouldn't have? I'm the viper? I'm the snake? Sorry, look in the mirror honey cause you're projecting yourself again.
It amuses me that she says I am the one projecting and I am the one that overreacted. We really are saying the same things. And we are each completely convinced of our own position. I seriously doubt she will ever face reality and see what really happened here. Her ego wouldn't be able to handle the realization that all of her problems are her own doing and that her victim act doesn't hold any water. She has to cast the blame off of herself because she is too immature and emotionally incompetent to accept responsibility for herself and her endless list of personality problems.
How I would love to castigate her. It would be so easy to go off on her and lay out the real reasons her life is so pathetic. And I can't believe it took me that long to see that she is irredeemable. She is too damaged to ever function normally in society. She will never understand what it means to be a family or to take responsibility for herself. She will continue throughout her life in the same pattern of black and white thinking, of placing people on a pedestal until her ego is threatened or someone actually wants her to accountable. Then she cuts them from her life rather than see that is truly is her that is the root of the problems. The very fact that she continues in the same cycles proves that she causes her own misery yet she would much rather claim the role of the poor, put-upon, misunderstood, always beaten down victim than face the cold hard truth. Thank god she is no longer my problem...
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