Emotional Tease--Hurt and Anger

From an emotional point of view, today has truly sucked. Hard.

This has been worse than the day I put the dog to sleep.

News at 11. (We're headed to a crawfish boil.)

***** (5:36 a.m. Saturday morning)

So I'm glad we went to the crawfish boil, even if I spent the entire evening swatting bugs, answering questions about our move and not eating crawfish. It gave me some time away from real life to cool down a bit.

I was having a perfectly normal day of cleaning and escapism when things started to go sour.

When she got home from school, my eight-year-old daughter managed to hurt my feelings worse than they've ever been hurt. It's hard to believe that a child could hurt someone she loves so much. She is normally sensitive to a fault.

But I'm not angry at her or anything. She is a child after all. I am furious and disappointed with myself for being the kind of person she would ever even think to say those things about.

Imagine if someone made a list of everything you hate about yourself; a list confirming the validity of all of your insecurities and then presented it to you in a birthday card.

That's how my Mother's Day weekend started out.

Yeah. Yay for mom. Woo fucking hoo. I suck.

Then while my son and I were off practicing the violin, my husband's relationship with his father changed forever.

I wish I could talk more about it. I can't say the things my heart is screaming for me to say to my husband or anyone else because my husband will always be...well...loyal. "He is still my father," he tells me and I want to shake my husband and wail, "He never was! Can't you see he never was?"

I am so angry I could burst apart at the seems.

I've always stayed out of their so-called relationship. I've been cool, but cordial. I have over and over again through the years wanted to declare that my children would never be exposed to that man and his wife.

Now I have valid reason.

My kids don't even know who Grandpa B is. It will stay that way. That man has been dead to me since my husband was a teenager. Now he will be dead to all of us for good.

Except my husband is still open to a reconciliation if his father should ever realize what an idiot he has been.

There is a fine line a woman must walk when she wants to protect her own. Deep down inside, I want to call my own father and have him (in his very impressive way) put my dead-to-me-father-in-law in his place.

But I love my husband too much to overstep my bounds. Should I ever meet that man again, I will tell him...well...I can't tell you that. But I already have the words memorized should I ever lay eyes on him.

I have always wondered how my husband could have been raised by such a horrible little man and turned out to be the wonderful husband and father he is?

No matter his flaws, my husband is a wonderful man. I think it is proof that people can be born with everything good already inside of them. With enough strength, they can overcome anything.

This man is walking away from a happy, successful son who has committed his life to his country, his loving wife and his two amazing children. That is the definition of loser.