(Insert deep sigh here) Today is DS’s 23rd birthday. We had his celebration at DD2’s house with all of the littles. My son tried to get me to run to the car for something but I immediately knew what was going on, he wanted to talk to his sister without me in earshot. I looked at him and asked, did he text you happy birthday? Yeah, he replied… he didn’t want me to know. I asked if he replied thank you, he said no, I said I think you should, he said “I think he shouldn’t have pushed you”. Fair answer.
Why am I encouraging my children to show respect to a man who didn’t respect their mother?
Because I still care what he thinks. Because I still don’t want him to judge us. Because I still want a lifeline that connects me to him and to believe he’s reaching out to them because he does love me.
And this is the mind fuckery of a toxic relationship.
From the last week of August through the last week of October, we have 6 family birthdays between us. One of which happens to be His. I kept debating, should I, will I, do I, tell him happy birthday? I don’t know, it’s in 3 days. I screwed up. I decided no, I would not text him, call him, email him… but I did send a fucking present! Why??? Because I can’t stand the fact that’s he’s going on like I don’t exist, layer that with my inner people pleaser who wants to make sure someone gets him something… because no one else will. Unless of course, there’s someone new. Let me take this to an even more fucked up level, I scheduled it to be delivered two days early because if it upsets him that I sent something I didn’t want it to be on his actual birthday.
All this concern and worry over a guy who literally told me exactly what he wanted for his birthday a couple years back, which included me paying for a hotel room in advance, taking off of work, buying new clothes, I even had a cake made for him that was to be placed in the room for our arrival along with flowers and a spread of petals… fucking fairy-tale shit, and that morning he looks at me and tells me he decided he didn’t want to go. And when I looked at him like he must be kidding – he said, “It’s my birthday isn’t it? Shouldn’t I get to decide how I want to spend it?” I of course agreed with him that he should absolutely get to spend it how he wanted but reminded him that he said this was what he wanted and that I had invested over $1200 on this trip, he in turn reminded me that I was the one that always said money wasn’t what was important and he had changed his mind. He then turned his back on me and played his video games while I went and cancelled our non-refundable reservations and then sat in my car and cried.