That's the way it is, but it don gotta be

There are very few people whom I just cannot tolerate.  But there are many who work my nerve to the nth degree.  I can intellectualize and rationalize all I want.  I can remind myself that my frustration is only harming me, eating at me, chipping away at my cool objectivity until I resemble some seething, writhing mass that I pity.

I have not even met this miserable mass with whom I am ashamed to claim shared womanhood.  But, am I really any better?  Why do I put up with this?  Am I a glut for punishment, eating the bitter filth because it's there and keeps coming on?  That's it, swallow and gulp, fast as you can.  Open up and say ahhh! down the hatch, good girl!

My guy was married, but he has been divorced several years now.  His ex instigated the divorce, pushing and pushing for it.  Giving birth to it, through demanding labor.  She stormed into the lawyers office and stirred a flurry of paperwork about, demanding that my guy go and sign.  He did.

Her lawyer took him aside and told him that he was getting royally screwed.  But, my guy just wanted it done, over, had enough.  So he signed, walked away from an amazing amount of goods, agreed to pay for her health insurance for an absurd amount of time (COBRA, mind you, even more expensive than a "regular" dependent), washed his hands...or did he?

She fiddled and farted, frittered and wasted, squandered and pilfered, and spent the money her father (!) gave her to pay her lawyer's fees (of which my guy had already paid half).  She spent the money on her habits, truly digging herself deeper and deeper, ending up in rehab, yet again.  Bringing misery to most, but especially those who allowed it to continue.

Finally, my guy realizes that this will continue indefinitely, he will also continue to pay her COBRA insurance because the divorce was not finalized and only then would the time period he agreed to BEGIN.  So he goes to the lawyer, and pays her half of the divorce.  The papers go through the judge's approval that very day and are popped off in the mail.  She receives her copies, calls, crying, screaming, wailing, carrying on about how she had thought that they would work it out and get back together.  Back together?  After a marriage of absence and abuse and what "together"ness and intimacy was there?  Nothing.  Or so I thought.  More fool me.

Her meal ticket, get out of jail free card, rescuer with the credit card and ruined credit was walking.  She'd pushed, but she despaired of his withdrawl.  Now, she mourned her loss of a whipping post.  She was beginning to realize she had messed a good thing.  Or had she?  Had she really messed a good thing?

Years later, umpteen rehab visits gone by, a few more scrapes with the law, and her own parents pressing charges.  She calls him, writes him, leaves messages, approaches his friends and family now.  Still.

When they were married, she only called upon him to come bail her out of this latest mess.  Taking off for days at a time, no messages, til the dark wee hours with a collect call from this or that county jail.  Yet he would resign himself, heave a sigh, go get her ass.

Why?  He tells me that he thought he deserved that.  Really?  I tsk, tsk, there now, you po'babee, how I bleed for you.  But now, I wonder...

She truly puts the con in con-artist.  Cunningly manipulative, seductive in her approach, her methods of sneaking, sliding, slithering coyingly into his life through his mother.  Oddly though, she has never left.

He didn't wash his hands, still willingly soiling them in the greasy muck of her acquaintance.  He didn't walk away.  He does nothing to discourage her, and yet protests that he doesn't see how the very act of not discouraging her is encouragement.

He allows it to continue, I allow it to continue.  This endless barage of contact that escalates as time passes instead of diminishing and fading, sour grapes and slinking away.

No, she hasn't messed a good thing.  She still has him.  Such a slick grip.  Not even physically here, not in the same town, not in the same county.  No, she has a hold all the same.  A pull that he cannot, will not resist.  He won't shut himself of her.

He tells me, there is no harm.  How does this hurt you?  Yes, it's true that she and my mother hated each other with a passion and yet now are thick thieves in the guise of Christianly tolerance and Christly love.

I wonder, am I seeing this clearly?  Is it something that I can bear?  Does his vanity feed of her continued attentions and ploys of affection and supposed caring?  When will it end?  How will it end?

It could endwith me.  I could end this.  I am beginning to see that he will not see.  He will deny that it thrills him.  He will continue deny that it pains me.  Perhaps the ending, is soon, with me driving away.  Not washing, not walking, not staying, not fooling, deluding myself and others.

It could end with me, not allowing it to continue.  I cannot control others actions, but I can my own reactions.  What is more, I can pro-act, and choose to tolerate no more.  To leave this mess.  To wipe the woven webs away.