The first thing I noticed as I stepped out of the house last Friday was the sky; it was the first time in weeks the weather was clear and the sky was blue, a perfect blue. It was a lovely day. Smiling, I reached into the mailbox; there were two items inside and one was addressed to me. My heart dropped to the sidewalk below me when I read the return address.
It was a letter from S______.
I tore the envelope open and read it; it was friendly, far too friendly in its cheerfulness. If anything, it felt like every other time S______ had reached out to me. The cheerful “How are you?” that would invariably lead to faultfinding and eventually, a full-fledged diatribe. It’s a familiar cycle, one that’s been repeated since the 1990s.
It’s one I’m tired of and I don’t want to repeat anymore. But now I’m in a very prickly position.
I can ignore the letter. I don’t have to answer it in any way, shape or form. I can simply act as though I didn’t get it or it got lost in the mail.
I can also answer her if I choose, but do it via my old blog. That way, if she wants contact, it can be on my terms and not hers; I can choose low contact if needed. I don’t have to update the Blogger site all that often; just a few lines every month or two and I’d be done with it.
But then again, I don’t even know if I want to go that far. The day after I got the letter, I re-read her screed. I shook my head as I realized that this was the same person who said, “And you’re likely to not want to speak to me, ever again.” But she posted a rant about me anyway.
There’s a part of me that wants nothing to do with her, that wants her to actually have to live with the consequences of the things she wrote. She knew it was a very real possibility, yet she posted her screed anyway. She’s done this sort of thing before. She did it back in the ’90s when she told my then significant other that he should break up with me because I was, in her words, “a bitch”. She did it back in the early 2000s when she tried to gaslight me on why I left my ex and then demanded I get involved with interpersonal drama that was a thousand miles away from me. This is an established pattern, one I’ve seen multiple times.
Quite frankly, I’m sick of it. I’ve been sick of it. She’s one of the reasons I don’t use Blogger anymore–that and it sucks now–and I don’t want to deal with her again. I know the set-up and I know how everything will end. It won’t be a good ending, if you’re wondering.
Part of me misses her. But the other part is done with the drama. I don’t know which side I should follow.
