I can't believe he called!!!!!

I wrote back February of last year about an incident with one of my exes.  I was horribly upset afterwards and I had someone tell him to not contact me anymore. 

I wrote the piece below in December of 2011, but never gave him the letter. Now I'm wishing I did. I wasn't at work on Friday but I called to see if I had any messages and sadly I had one message, from him. He called me at work because he knows I don't answer my phone at home.  Now I'm wondering if I shouldn't snail mail this letter to him..... 

I know I shouldn't let it bug me but I can't help it bugs me. I'm pissed about it too. I mean I was in a perfectly good mood, I was going to have a great long week-end and now I'm upset over this dumb ass again.

December 2011

Dear asshole friend. [The original text uses his full name here], 

I’m profoundly disappointed in you. You’ve been acting like a spoiled little boy for years. You say you respect your mother, but this isn’t true. Sure you treat your mother with more respect than you treat most people but if you truly honoured your mother, in true Mohawk tradition, you would treat all women in your life with the same kind of respect.  I remember you telling me years ago when we lived together that I wasn’t worthy of that respect.  Why you believe that is beyond me and incredibly hurtful.   If anything I have been a woman who has loved you, believed in you and tried the most to help you, other than your mom and your sister.   

  

I had to face my mom’s cancer alone, with a drunken asshole around me all the time. I would get home from work by the time you were on your 12^th beer. I did not get the support I needed at any given point. You didn’t even allow me a day alone to grieve by myself. Like having a drunken idiot who tries to pick fights with you, around you, is helpful to help you grieve? 

Yet when you called me to tell me about your mom’s cancer, I came running. I put away my hurts and was there for you so that you could be there for your mom. The pain I had to carry alone when my mom was sick and died, I didn’t wish anyone to have to go through this alone. 

When you called that night in February 2011 I could see you were in pain and needed to talk. Instead of being a man and telling me what was really on your mind, you decided to attack me verbally to the point where I felt I didn’t have a place anymore in this world. You spent over 30 minutes saying mean and hurtful things that I hope you don’t actually believe.  It’s not the first time you tell me such things, but this time is the last. You had the audacity to say you had brought me flowers the week before and ask me what I did for you in return.  When I’ve been there for you, I never did it to ‘get’ something in return. I was there for you because you needed me.  

That night on the phone you acted like a frightened little boy beating on the person who was there for you.  I still to this day do not understand what I did to you to deserve this profound disrespect. I don’t give a damn that you were drunk.  If you didn’t feel this profound disrespect for me, you wouldn’t voice it so adamantly when you drink. You wouldn’t try to make me feel like I didn’t deserve to walk this earth. 

It is incredibly hurtful that instead of acknowledging that when you drink you act like a jerk, you pretend like it didn’t happened.   Just because you have no recollection of being a jerk, does not mean you were not a jerk.     You’ve spent at least the last 12 years telling me that since you don’t remember being a jerk, and I don’t have it on camera,  I have no right to be upset at the impossible situations you have put me in due to your drinking.  

I’ve repeatedly told you that I do not want to be around you after you drink alcohol. I’ve put up with two years of your perpetual drunkenness one of which was while my mom was dying. I don’t ever want to have to put up with a drunken YOU ever again.   You consistently ignore this wish and subject me to your appalling behaviour over and over again. I stopped drinking myself 30 years ago because I didn’t like who I became when I drank, but you expect me to put up with you?  

 That being said, I’m done with you.  I am a person who deserves more than this kind of treatment and if all you have for me is disrespect then I don’t want to be part of your world. You wonder why my daughters have no respect for you, and don’t ever want to see you again? Look no further, they can see how you disrespect me and by extension, them. 

I still love you, despite all, and always will. I wish you no harm and hope one day you will become a man and be able express your real feelings instead of attacking the women who choose to be there for you. A man, who accepts responsibility for his actions, acknowledges the stupid things he did, apologizes when he’s made mistakes and works towards making amends for those he’s wronged.  I hope one day you learn to lean into your paddle. 

Walk in Beauty