#reverb10 Letting go

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

This is fairly difficult to write as I am still in the process of letting go.

I am part of a Patchwork family. There is my son, his dad, my partner. And then there`s her. She`s his new partner, has been for a few years now. She has two children, one girl from a previous relationship, one girl with my ex-partner. We´ve known each other for 6 years, i liked her instantly, we spent a vast amount of time together, not just with our children, we exchanged letters, phone calls, e-mails. and every two years she does something that really shocks me: she suddenly and to me for me no apparent reason decides that she`s better off without me, she cuts off any communication, she doesn`t answer my mails or writes excruciatingly detailed mails to me that all come down to " things i never told you ". And needless to say, these things are never pleasant, but nasty and unforgiving. She is the better mother, the better girlfriend, the better person. And every two years, she breaks my heart. A few months ago, it happened again. I wasn`t happy because she ambushed me in front of the children about a holiday her and the gang wanted to take. They had told me for months they didn`t have any money, he hadn`t paid full child support and now they were planning on flying somewhere for a week to chill out. I was tacken aback by this fact and told her I didn`t want to discuss it in front of the kids. She didn`t back off. Things got nasty. I cried. I cry easily, my friends call me McWeepy:) She knows this, but still didn`t back off. Things got even more nasty. When she left, I felt utterly devastated and shocked. I couldn`t believe it had happened again. All this after a summer together with the kids, swimming and baking and laughing. Once again, all gone. My partner said he was fed up and couldn`t understand why I put up with her. My friends called her Mcbitchy and said that she didn`t deserve me. I wasn´t so sure. She wrote nasty mails, I wrote back, pleading, asking what had gone wrong. No real answer. So in the end, I wrote a long mail telling her that I didn`t want this kind of pseudo- friendship anymore. I told her I missed her but that I wasn´t willing to put up with her treating me like this anytime she felt like it. The thought of letting my child go there every second weekend and her playing supermom, bribing him with all sorts of things including a rabbit, makes me sick to my stomach and makes the situation so much worse. Things were much easier when we got along. What now? I know I have to let go, because this construction is toxic. But I find it very, very difficult and I just want to understand why this happened. It`s not easy to let go of something you do not understand.