I found out tonight that I'm a verbally abusive asshole. Every now and then I Google my name to see what's out there (you find some neat stuff sometimes... did you know there's something called "The League of Nathans"?)... Anyway, I stumbled across a blog entry by my ex from a few years ago.
Apparently I'm "very intimidating", a "know it all", also "controlling", and I "blatantly ignore everything she says". She's "afraid" to talk to me, and feels that I will give my oldest son "grief". And my favorite part was, "I suppose it is old baggage that he carries still, but he tends to see me as someone who doesn't deserve a whole lot of respect so it's often when I have something to say he sort of sarcastically snorts and has a smart ass remark to contribute."
I'm not even sure where to start on this. Over the years it's amazed me how she managed to come out of the divorce as the "good guy", all squeaky clean and with the mutual friends of the time all taking her side. I got to be the villain, the big meanie-head, and the one at fault. Back when the baggage did weigh me down, I didn't really spend a lot of time noticing or worrying about all that, but for some reason it bugs me a lot now. In every other way I have moved on, but seeing such an alternate reality spin on situations so close to me really kick-starts my sense of injustice. Oh, never enough to bring it up and try to debate it (despite her belief that I "love" to debate everything, which is a complete misunderstanding of my obsession with truth)... but enough that I had to at least complain to the empty vacuum that is my daily readership on this blog. (No offense intended, should anyone actually be reading this.)
It's oh so tempting to spell out and list the faults as I see them, the causes and reasons behind the divorce and where things all broke down... and this is one good example of when taking the high road feels so much crappier than speeding down the low road.
It's hard to read about how much of a victim she thinks she is, when it's so easy to remember being a hair's width from suicide trying to dig my way out of the worst years of my life. Victim my ass. (And there was no snort there!)
All I can hope for, I guess, is that there really is something to Karma... and that someday this crap will stop.