Three Days of Strain

Today was the third difficult day in a string of difficult days. Hopefully this will follow the rule of threes and the difficult days will fade into the background after today. I would love to be left in peace.

I'm not the type of person who likes to talk about things that other people have done to me. Everyone has their own story, and every fight has two sides. I also believe that people need to take responsibility for their own decisions and their own actions rather than projecting responsibility onto their friends and family. 

With that in mind, let me tell you about the past few days. As much as possible, I'd like to only talk about myself.

I've been over-extending myself by agreeing to do too much for too many people. The amount of (unpaid) work that I'm currently doing for people in my life is beginning to exhaust me, and it's time for me to reach out to those people I'm helping to point out to them that I'm not capable of continuing on at the previous pace. It may also be time for me to put my foot down and demand that the people in my life respect me enough to say "thank you" for the things that I do for them. My over-extension is my own fault, and I need to learn when to say "no." Even so, I'm exhausted.

The things I've promised have taken over from the things I enjoy. These things should not be permitted to rule my life.

Yesterday was a difficult parenting day. As with other issues, I'm not going to spread my six-year-old daughter's dirty laundry on the internet by openly discussing the problems that she struggles with. Those are her struggles and when she's old enough, perhaps she will blog with them. 

I can tell you (in good conscience) that yesterday reduced me to tears on more than one occasion. Even with three adults in the house, we struggled to provide the tools that our daughter needs in order to make the right choices, and much of the weight of helping her fell on my (exhausted) shoulders. I'm not a perfect parent (by any stretch of the imagination!), but I was finally able to help her to become complaint. 

Coming into today, I was tired, but hopeful that things were going to get better. It's important to me to keep a positive attitude about things, because I believe that a positive attitude can make all the difference between a good day and a bad day.

Courtesy Luca Rossato CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Today has been something else. My positive attitude has carried me through and it's mostly been a good day. Even so, someone triggered my anxiety today. Fortunately my tool kit is growing and I'm finding it easier to handle the emotions that come up every time something like this happens.

Forgive me for saying this, because I strive to always be absolutely honest: I'm keeping a secret. It's a big secret and it's one that I have to keep. Some of you might not understand this, but those who know my secret will understand why it's something that I keep buried as deeply as I possibly can. The internet is not the appropriate place for me to air my dirty laundry, and this secret involves other people whose stories are their own to tell. One of those people is still a minor child. I will leave you to deduce of this what you will, and will continue on with the part of the story that belongs to me.

I married young the first time around. At the time I was barely an adult and believed that I was in love with a much older man. 

Teenagers rarely make good spouses, and though I was in my twenties by the time the marriage ended, I didn't grow through the marriage. Looking back now, and having grown in the meantime, I can assure you that I made my fair share of mistakes. I'm a horrible cook (even to this day), tend toward laziness, and am inherently self-centered. In those days I was argumentative, contentious, and always looking for a reason to fight. Fights gave me a high that I couldn't get any other way, and I was known for arousing the people around me (my father, my sister, my husband, my friends) to anger because it made me feel good.

While my ex-husband is hardly exempt from any blame whatsoever, I accept that I could have done better. I will not take the blame for his behavior, but I will also not accuse him publicly from this point forward. Nor will I remove previous posts and articles that discuss his behavior during the course of our marriage.

I will say that for all my flaws, he was not a good man.

What he is now is not for me to say. I have neither seen nor spoken to him in thirteen years. He may have turned his life around and turned himself into a new man, and he might have stayed the same as he was when we were married. It's not for me to say because I don't know.

I do know that someone who has information that could only have come directly from my ex or someone in his life has been using the internet to harass me anonymously. This person attempts to discredit me accusing me of cheating on my ex (online), which never happened; by calling me names; by saying "you are a bad person who likes to bend the truth"; and by accusing me of attempted murder.

If I answer to these accusations in replies to the comments being left on my articles, I do nothing but add fuel to the fire. 

I've changed. Controversy no longer excites me. Confrontation scares me. I have post traumatic stress and panic disorder. I do not want this fight, but this person has persisted in attempting to smear my name and to make me look bad on writings that I have produced and which earn an income for my family.

This is the best answer that I have to all of this, and there is a chance I will remove it out of fear. The person doing this attempts to control me by fear and bullying. It is narcissistic, abusive behavior, while pointing the finger at me and calling me an abuser, a bad person, and more.

I'm hesitant, even now, to post this and confirm my identity to the individual who has been harassing me, but I did report them to their ISP today. Hopefully the harassment will stop. If it does not, I may have no choice but to contact the police half a world away.

Goodnight, everybody.