Fuck that guy

Mr. Flint emailed me. He would like to get together to “address our grievances,” if only for the sake of our mutual friends, because they shouldn’t have to choose between us. A bloo bloo bloo.

My amazing ability to read between the lines translates this for me:

“I would like to find some way to make you stop telling people I raped you.”

Well, good luck with that, Flint.

I do not like hearing from my ex-husband. I would have preferred not to. And I’m certainly not going to see him, or respond to his creepy guilt tripping. But in a lot of ways, this has brought me up out of my funk.

All the time I get so angry at him for getting away with everything he got away with, while I struggle with the aftermath of years of abuse, the psychological as well as financial toll. And I know that in some vague barely-comforting way, karmically, he’s not getting away with anything. A person like that will only end up with the friends and family and life they deserve, because only others who deserve a person like that will tie their lives to them. The rest, like me, will get away. But, still, it is nice to realize that something has happened to cause him to want to shut me up. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care. But I know that something has happened that he wants me to fix, and I know that I am not going to fix it. That makes me feel a little bit karmically overjoyed.

Sometimes it is really helpful to remember there is an external source for all my broken-ness lately. It wouldn’t drive a complete recovery, but every now and again a petulant little “well fuck you I won’t be broken then” helps center me. When a person only exists in your head, a collection of memories and fear, they can get blown up to some massive uncontrollable proportions. It is nice to remember that he is a real person, using a very small handful of the same tricks, that now seem very small and obviously crazy to me.

My bear and I were talking a little last night about how it seems like emotions and feelings and thoughts and memories rear up whenever they are relevant, or about to become relevant. Like, perhaps, smelling something before you step in it. Maybe there is a sort of sixth sense to prepare yourself for a thing before it hits you. I remember, just after the divorce, one day having a major panic attack thinking, Mr. Flint isn’t going to let me get away with leaving him. Out of nowhere, that thought. When I got home that night, I thought about going out to get some videos to help me relax, then thought, for some reason, no. Don’t go outside. Sure enough, after an hour of sitting on the couch hyperventilating, thinking to myself, don’t start doing anything, don’t leave, just sit here, my doorbell rang and it was Mr. Flint, looking for “closure.”

I have been overwhelmed lately with a mix of feelings, some of them healthy and some of them the puked-up centipedes of a lifetime. They don’t feel good, but at least they’re bubbling up. I have been spending an awful lot of time and energy wondering why, why is this stuff coming up, what is happening, inevitably leading to what is wrong with me. There are a lot of reasons why this stuff is coming up. But I think Mr. Flint’s email was one of them. It feels like a final piece has clicked into place. Anger fear anger fear anger fear panic YOU. IT WAS YOU. It’s like I was on this circular loop, bad feelings lead to bad me and bad me leads to bad feelings and I am stuck this way FOREVER. He just unraveled it, made it linear. A point that begins with him, begins with my father, and leads ever outward, (though maybe it kinks every now and again).

I have more to say but am maybe sick of saying it.

No, wait, one more thing.

Seriously. Flint. Fuck yourself.

Also: Oh my god somebody left A TON of cookie bars on the break room table. Fuck yeah.