Editing My Yelling

I love a good email fight.  I think I'm much better at them than regular yelling because I have time to edit.  You can't really edit yelling.  Kind of defeats the purpose.  Anyway, it's rude to post someone else's email so I won't post the one my gee-I-really-regret-it-but-I-think-I-have-to-accept-it-about-to-be-ex wrote.   I'll just post my response to it.   And I should put "Kablammo" at the end but I think it'll ruin it from a stylistic standpoint so if you would all just mentally add "Kablammo" after you're finished reading it, that'd be swell.  

(ahem)

Dear Mr. K.,

I remember that time you're describing a bit differently.  I remember it as the time when Troubled was living in the back of a car in the rain because that's what she chose.  When the police were taking statements because of choices she made and you did nothing to discourage.   When I was not proclaiming your cowardice to the world, but lamenting an intolerable situation to two of my only friends.  When poppyseed tea was flowing because children who were trying to act like adults and failing miserably were making horrible mistakes.

Maybe you broke because you were starting to get a glimmer of how I have felt for the last six months and the six before that and before that and before that.  Helpless and frustrated and diminished.  Everything I had predicted and protested -- watching it all happen exactly as I had feared and worse.

Maybe you broke because you were starting to realize how your inaction and indulgence had led you to this point.  Your refusal to work with me, to set a plan and stick to it, to set limits for your child, to encourage her to learn from her mistakes instead of swooping in to rescue her.  Maybe you were starting to see how truly damaging that turned out to be.

And I fervently hope that maybe, just maybe, you were starting to see how your drinking and denial were catching up with you, and that nothing could really be made right until you dealt with that.

Because if any of that were true, then maybe, just maybe, there might be something worth salvaging in this marriage.  But I suspect that you are nowhere near ready to acknowledge the truth in anything I've just described. In which case, as you say, it's maddening and pointless to continue.

I don't need a few days to reflect.  I've been doing my reflecting.  I've been searching my soul for ways to forgive you but I always come back to the anger and the betrayal and the drinking and the denial.  I stayed with you in what I feel were truly dark times, through two hospitalizations for a disease that is clearly alcohol-related, when it was so apparent that you needed help, that you had to quit drinking and yet you could not. You admitted as much in the same breath as you denied that the doctor had told you that you should. 

If there is anything in this marriage worth salvaging, it's going to have to start with that.  I guess that's something for you to reflect on.  Let me know what you decide.