“You should let yourself feel anger or even rage about this,” my therapist said, and I thought, I’m not sure I even know what the difference is, but I feel one of those for sure. More than that, though, was the mixture of shock and utter lack of surprise.
Shock because, to be honest, doing what she did felt intentionally cruel to an unmistakable degree; if I’d been giving her the benefit of the doubt since the divorce — and I had, I think, if only because I couldn’t really comprehend that she was being mean as opposed to selfish in so many instances— then this was the wake-up call to tell me otherwise. There was no realistic reason what happened happened outside of cruelty. I hadn’t, really, expected that, I don’t think.
I also hadn’t expected it to happen then, like that; to me, the issue was unresolved and open, and we still had to talk about it. The last time I saw her, even — two weeks ago today exactly — I’d said that to her face, that we needed to sit down and talk about it. She’d said sure, which to my mind meant (means) agreement. I’m shocked, still, because I was literally expecting a discussion, a say, some kind of heads up. Instead, an email telling me after the fact that it had happened with no warning.
(Again, the feeling of, did she know even then that’s what would happen? Was the sure just a way to end the conversation for her?)
The utter lack of surprise comes from… I don’t know, the knowledge that, of course this was what was going to happen. From knowing that the selfishness and need to “win,” the need to hurt me was there if not all along, at least from the time she announced her plan in the first place. From remembering the horrible, shitty conversation in October where I tried to find out information and details and she said, sneering, that I don’t get a say and this is what happens when I leave, and if I wanted to, I could sue her because she’d never change her mind.
Thinking back to that conversation, of course she’d do this. Anything else would mean compromise or loss for her, and neither are acceptable, especially not in what she repeatedly calls her “new life.”
I do feel angry, and shocked, and not surprised. But more than anything, I feel so, so sad. And that, I suspect, was what she really wanted all along.