flickers
I’m exhausted with fighting the gaslighting. D continues to try to bully her way back into the house by any means possible, clinging persistently to a kind of moral equivalency between her actions and mine in terms of the material causes of the divorce. Or at least, she did, until yesterday, when she and P, in a flashpoint, kind of ganged up on me. I had been shielding P from the full extent of D’s actions, so P’s impression had always been that the divorce was basically a mutual, 50/50 blame situation and that her mom really got the short end of the stick in the process, screwed to the wall by a vindictive Dad. But yesterday, eventually, over the course of the conversation, it reached a point where I had no choice but to (as gently as I could) remind D, in P’s presence, of what she did,. and the ways in which she potentially affected the kids in the process. P left the room midway through, but something seemed to click in D’s brain—time will tell if it’s genuine—and she abruptly went to P’s room, talked for 15-odd minutes, and emerged, telling me that P finally knew the full truth about what Mom did.
She said P told her that she doesn’t consider either of her parents to be role models, and she wants to be independent and strike out on her own as soon as she can. I would be more concerned except that much of that is normal and healthy assertion of independence at that age, so that’s the spirit in which I’m going to take it. After D left, P emerged a while later, and we talked casually, so it doesn’t feel like the revelations caused an immediate sea change in our dynamic. So I’m grateful for that also.
I went over to D’s apartment afterward to deliver some Christmas presents for her to wrap, and to check on her, since she left in a state of distress. She had recovered somewhat. Hopefully it was a turning point, and the gaslighting will diminish. Regardless, I’m still firmly resolved that she’s not returning to the house. More than anything, I just want her to make better decisions about herself, her lifestyle, and her health, for her own sake but also for the kids—and she needs help to do that. It’d be easy for me to say “Just make better choices,” but the reality is that there’s still unresolved trauma that informs her impulsiveness and lack of healthy decision-making ability, so there’s no bootstrapping here. She needs counseling, and that I would be willing to contribute to, and I offered, if she’ll take me up on it.