After I left the hospital, I began to feel some of that old anger come back to me.
I had several thoughts on the drive home.
Up until now, when ever I saw his girlfriend (in a way that I had to interact with her) I would say to her "I am so glad he has you in his life", and I did tell her at one point early on, when things were really awkward and she was having a difficult time dealing with us, I said to her at one point when we were alone, (actually she had a friend there) " I just want you to know that I do not bear any ill will toward you or Stu. I am thankful that he has you in his life, and wish for you to feel welcomed. Please know this is the absolute truth, from the bottom of my heart."
After my intereaction with Stu in the hospital yesterday, I thoght on my way home, "Screw him. If the stories I've heard about her from others are true, then she is as horribly manipulative as he is, and they effing deserve each other. So now I can say with less compassion and more anger, "yeah, you guys deserve each other."
This is not a good state of mind for me to be in.
But it came flooding in so fast and completely that it makes me think I still have things to process.
When I got home, I shared the experience with my excellent friend of 30+ years. She said a profound thing to me that I have neverheard her say:
Well, Michelle, honestly I've always thought that Stu was a 'woman hater' ".
As I pondered it through the night, and looked over our life together, all the demeaning, belittling, manipulative, game playing cruel things he did and said suddenly made sense. It is as if his current condition has stripped away all of his filters and his abilities to carry out his lifelong facades. He is now living openly, the hate that he has had for me all of our married life. It is both refreshing and sad. All of the years he presented these wonderful facades of the adoring husband and father, perfectly Christian with his family in line. When I divorced him, he was no longer able to present that perfect facade. I imagine that once that occurred, his rage REALLY kicked in. You know, underneath the surface.
So now, it is on me to decide what I am going to do with these feelings.
I was awake in the middle of the night, chewing on all of this and praying, "Lord, help me to see things right and not stay in this place."
After this night of prayer, and a little bit of sleep I woke up with a sense of peace and freedom.
I have decided that, other than to be a support to my children and extended family and eventually visiting friends, I do not need to see Stuart anymore. Particularly not at the hospital, unless he really requests it, which I doubt will happen.
This leads me to some other questions:
1). We have many longtime and very dear shared friends.
If his hate carries on unfiltered like this, do I give up going to our annual bocce ball and New Years Eve get togethers? Since the divorce we have been well able to navigate these events remaining cordial to each other and getting along for the sake of those friendships. If he starts ranting and calling me the 'C' word or other things, it will get really bad for the other friends attending the events. But I don't want to lose those friends. And these two events are usually the only times I get to see them all together as they all live in Eugene and Portland.
So this is a thing that concerns me. And it's all hypothetical really. So why borrow trouble I guess.
2). How will it be at family events now? Even though we are divorced we still get together with the in-laws and kids and cousins for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. How's that gonna work now?
Anyway, there it is for now.
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