My ex-MiL died yesterday.  It has felt so awful not to be able to be included in the circle of family that grieve her and have been there as she has slowly faded away after a long battle with cancer.  I was able to leave her a message and then spoke to my ex-FiL who was kind. 

One of my ex-SiLs called today and cheerfully recounted some of the happenings of the last few weeks.  My ex doesn’t speak of me at all.  He has moved on.  He is remarried and is happier by all accounts.

27 years of being in the family and I just feel so angry that my GIDXH doesn’t have the decency to call me or to respond to a sympathetic email.  My sons are there with them and I try not to interfere and allow them to interact with their cousins and family there without being too inquisitive.

I feel such a mix of anger and grief arising again and just wanted to express it here.  Somehow I keep expecting my GIDXH to be kinder - to reach out and honour me in some way.  It is mental really.  It is just stupid to expect that he will somehow be different and change now.  But I thought time would help us be civil and kind, but as much as I try to ‘go high’ when he goes ‘low’ - it still hurts.  I keep having to remind myself how for so many years my emotional wellbeing was never something he cared about as he betrayed and deceived me.  It feels raw and fresh again even though it has been three years since the divorce.

I am triggered so badly because I am also back visiting with my family and in places I normally was with him, not alone.  I feel the sadness as I see my siblings with their intact families continuing with their lives.  The grief at my loss of the future I had worked so hard for rises up again and I am sad, and angry too.  Angry that my stubborn heart still on some level longs to talk to the man I was married to.  But he doesn’t exist.  That person is gone.  To hope for any kindness now is madness.  But then this whole situation feels like madness.  I worked so hard for so long to ‘fix’ the problems that he never wanted to fix.  By not ever disclosing his sexual preferences, needs and just staying hidden, being ‘naughty’ he got off for years on having a patsy of a wife as he played away with me there to tend the kids until they left home.  And then he was gone and quickly remarried an new wife with no kids and a successful business.  Anyway I torture myself here with thoughts of him somehow being different than he has always been.  His actions or lack of action tell all.

“You find out what kind of man you married, only when you divorce him.”  I only found out the truth of my marriage as we divorced.  It was full of many betrayals and the deceptions and the shock still gets me at times and I keep hoping that somehow I will be able to access the man I thought I was with.  And then like the movie “The Sixth Sense” it feels like the whole narrative of my life has shifted utterly.  I look back and everything has different meanings and interpretations.  I keep replaying it all.  It isn’t healthy.

Moving on feels so difficult.  I know in my head the reality and the necessity of moving away from rumination on this sorry topic, and am doing better slowly, but sometimes my heart just feels addicted to the narrative and wanting to make sense of a situation that just doesn’t compute.  How could I have been so wrong about this person I spend half my life with?  It is just so challenging as my MiL’s death highlights my outsider status and I feel so grief stricken.  Again. 

I’m trying to be patient with myself and kind.  It is just hard to deal with all the triggers and I’m just feeling miserable and feeling bad about feeling miserable when this is so old, I’m bored with it, but it just keeps coming up.  Like a scab you pick and it bleeds.  Again.